Well written and well researched. You could feel b the writers empathy for the families and the victims.

True crime book club

This book gave a chapter for each victim, spending the time to tell their stories from birth to death. Instead of focusing only on their drug addiction and sex work the author instead took the time to get to know them and tell us who they really were. For that only the book gets five stars.

I thought this was a good classic true crime story. The author did a good job of presenting the women as people who were victims of a man, rather than presenting the whole story as A Man who Killed People. I also thought the author did a fairly good job of including the fact that though police were the ones who solved the case, the people of South Central did have good reason not to trust the police. I think if I had read this five years ago, I would have reacted a lot more along the lines of “the detectives are just doing what’s best!” And I think it’s a good thing that that isn’t my immediate reaction anymore. Evidence abounds in this book and in real life that the police do some terrible things and get away with it. This book isn’t especially groundbreaking, per se, but it tells a compelling true crime story and brings more general awareness to an overlooked story.

This is such a terrible, devastating story. Too common, I fear.

I saw one review on here, someone who didn’t finish the book because some of the words used to describe the victims were critical and “dehumanizing.” Shit like that pisses me off. This journalist broke the story of Lonnie Franklin wide open and built legitimate relationships with the families of his victims. But you’re mad because she uses the word “prostitute” instead of “sex worker”? Seriously? This isn’t a story of liberated women controlling their sexuality and finances by virtue of their sexuality; it’s a story of women so in the thrall of drug addiction that they were on the streets using sex to score a rock. Being honest about that isn’t dehumanizing them. It’s just the truth. And this book does a pretty good job of painting these women as the full, complex human beings they were, with hopes and dreams and families and struggles that predated their addictions and deaths. Would I like to know more about them? Absolutely. Are they dehumanized in this book? Not at all.

The Grim Sleeper crimes are horrifying on myriad levels. And we will never know why Lonnie Franklin hated women so much. But this book tells us about how he was brought to justice—and, more importantly, tells us a bit about some of the young women whose lives were cut tragically short at his hands. And I’m sure there are many others we will never hear of.

I would have liked to see a bit more analysis in this book of the way socioeconomic factors and race impacted how LAPD handled these crimes. It’s referenced numerous times but never really delved into. Otherwise, glad this book exists to tell us more about this horrific case and about these women and their families, who absolutely deserved more than what they got.

important highlighting of these sometimes overlooked victims

Genuinely one of the best true crime books I’ve ever read. Incredibly well done.