‘Murderland’ exposes serial killers, corporate malfeasance

America’s love affair with True Crime appears unquenchable, with millions of people sitting in our homes streaming documentaries or listening with headphones to podcasts. They are endlessly enthralled with tales of violence and horror so senseless that an inevitable question arises: “Why?”

Murderland: Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers by Caroline Fraser

• Edgar Award finalist for True Crime
• Washington Post Notable
• A Best Book of the Year by The New Yorker, Forbes, NPR.
• Finalist for the 2026 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction

$32; Hardcover, 480 pages; Penguin Publishing Group. ISBN: 9780593657225

MEET THE AUTHOR

2:20 p.m. — 3:15 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 7, 2026 at Trinity United Methodist Church, 225 W. President St.

Lead is just one of a dozen chemicals that Fraser investigates, painting a portrait of  Washington State plagued by industrial trespasses on both the land and its residents. While the theory might seem far-fetched at the start, Fraser’s research will quickly beckon you over to her side of the room. 

Readers might find the subject matter an odd choice for Fraser, who previously won a Pulitzer Prize in 2018 for her biography of American author Laura Ingalls Wilder. But this subject matter hits close to home for the author, who grew up in Tacoma and weaves these lurid American tales with her own Washington childhood. Ted Bundy, present as a gruesome specter throughout the book, started committing his early atrocities when Fraser was a teenager. As she disturbingly notes of the charismatic killer, “Everybody knows somebody who knows somebody who almost went out with Ted Bundy.”

While Fraser’s tale catches us by the throat with its subject matter, its enduring impression is one of the lasting ecological devastation committed by the companies of the era. The Guggenheim family’s lead production company, Asarco, looms as vivid a villain as any of the book’s serial killers. It is hard to disagree with Fraser on this point, and specific comments about history’s repetition cause an eerie echo that is hard to shake. Fraser’s connections to our nation’s contemporary dark shadows and short collective memory add a timely sense of urgency as she draws cutting comparisons to the Sackler family’s role in the nation’s opioid crisis. Their subsequent donations to the art world to help remake their image are something that “the Guggenheim’s have already stealthily and handily accomplished.” The connection needs little embellishment, as the Guggenheim name is almost exclusively associated with its artistic enterprises, and its ties to the debilitating industries that funded it are now a forgotten afterthought. 

To read Fraser’s words is to stare down the barrel at histories that we have been unable to avoid and seem destined to repeat, but don’t let the darkness deter you- Fraser is a master at her craft, and reading Murderland is to be swept up in the hands of a capable and atmospheric master. Miss out at your peril.