Bestial : The Savage Trail of a True American Monster

Rating:
Summary: an incredible journey through the darkest places in history
Review: As a writer, I truly respect Schechter's ability to give a reader facts, while telling an incredible, and true tale. Particularly, "The Bestial" left me unsettled, yet captivated. I had difficulty thinking about his book - especially after the lights went out!

Rating:
Summary: an incredible journey through the darkest places in history
Review: Harold Schechter's "Bestial" is first and foremost an entertaining journey. Through the lives of the victims, the killer, and the authorities who investigate the crimes, Schechter unfolds a drama as facinating as a Poe tale. The book not only informs the reader about a forgotten serial killer, but relates the difficulty police had in connecting crimes and coordinating forces two catch a nomadic criminal. Highly recomended for anyone who enjoys a trip to the unsettling outskirts of human existence.

Rating:
Summary: Relentlessly terrifying
Review: In his early days, the subject of this true-crime history was so weird and insane-acting that no one in their right mind would allow him near them. But when he was sent to an insane asylum, over the years he learned a skill that made him one of the most dangerous predators in serial killer history: he learned to be perfectly, completely charming! Landladies had no hesitation showing this handsome, polite and obviously highly religious man their upstairs room to let... and they never left that room alive, as Ferral induced them to look up--- "what caused that stain?"--- broke their necks, and then raped their cooling corpses! As harrowing a true-crime account as I have ever read.

Rating:
Summary: Relentlessly terrifying
Review: In his early days, the subject of this true-crime history was so weird and insane-acting that no one in their right mind would allow him near them. But when he was sent to an insane asylum, over the years he learned a skill that made him one of the most dangerous predators in serial killer history: he learned to be perfectly, completely charming! Landladies had no hesitation showing this handsome, polite and obviously highly religious man their upstairs room to let... and they never left that room alive, as Ferral induced them to look up--- "what caused that stain?"--- broke their necks, and then raped their cooling corpses! As harrowing a true-crime account as I have ever read.

Rating:
Summary: More than muder and rape... in that order
Review: Schechter's book is a great read. It is a well written account of an American serial killer from a time before the term serial killer had been invented. The pleasant surprize of "Beastial" is the excellent treatment he gives the Social environment of America during the 1920s. The result is a greater understanding of the mind set of a country that was terrified by the sick twisted, corpse raping, body concealing "Gorilla" of a man known as Earle Leonard Nelson. I absolutely could not put this one down!

Rating:
Summary: More than muder and rape... in that order
Review: Schechter's book is a great read. It is a well written account of an American serial killer from a time before the term serial killer had been invented. The pleasant surprize of "Beastial" is the excellent treatment he gives the Social environment of America during the 1920s. The result is a greater understanding of the mind set of a country that was terrified by the sick twisted, corpse raping, body concealing "Gorilla" of a man known as Earle Leonard Nelson. I absolutely could not put this one down!