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Jan 18, 2011

Hilary rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

3 comments like (12 people liked it)

Aug 29, 2011

Brian rated it:

Very interesting subject, could use a little more editing and reorganizing

I heard about this book on the radio (probably Fresh Air, safe bet) and was immediately intrigued. The best of the world of investigation and forensics coming together to solve the toughest (or just covered-up) murders around.

The book mostly lives up to this so was enjoyable, but has some flaws that could've been improved with editorial input. First, there are many instances of quotations recycled a couple of t More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jan 08, 2012

Ashland Mystery rated it:

I don't know what I expected when Carl Hilton at Bookwagon in Ashland, Oregon hand sold me this book. Perhaps Robert Downey Jr, Kay Scarpetta and Columbo? but that's not what I found. It was true crime: horrifying in its perversion, and chilling in its reality. The Murder Room is about the founding and first generation of The Vidocq Society where the profiling, investigational patterns and forensics of serial murder are professionalized and shared.

It's an odd book in that the person More...

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Aug 28, 2011

Ann rated it:

This book was a fascinating look at how a real club of the world's greatest detectives and forensic minds get together every year to take on some of most difficult and heartbreaking cold cases pro bono. However interesting the subject matter, the book was also disorganized. There were jolting breaks between the crime stories and the narratives of the lives of the detectives. I was also disappointed by the final treatment and analysis of the famous "Boy in the Box" murder -- an unsol More...

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Aug 22, 2011

Cornerofmadness rated it:

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Aug 13, 2011

Joan rated it:

The central theme of this book is the Vidocq Society, and more specifically about some of the more well known murder cases that involved the efforts of several of the founders of the Society, William Fleisher, Frank Bender and Richard Walter. The Vidocq Society has 82 members and many more associates, all of whom have worked in some way to solving murder cases. It meets monthly in Philadelphia and is in part a social club and in part a last resort to the solution of cold cases. Frank Bender i More...

2 comments like

Jun 19, 2011

Robert J. rated it:

I have to put in a warning here – I was unable to finish this book. Heck, I was unable to take it seriously enough to barely start it.

The Vidocq Society is a real group of law enforcement professionals who get together informally to see if they can provide insight into cold crime cases. I'd heard of the society and occasionally read true crime books, so I decided to give it a try. The first chapter begins ….

“The great hall was filled with the lingering aroma of pork and ma More...

1 comment like (2 people liked it)

Jun 19, 2011

Melinda rated it:

I really wanted to give this book more credit. However the three stars provided was for the idea of the book moreso than the actual execution of it.

I agree with many other readers who have mentioned that the book is all over the place, and with the right finesse, this wouldn't have been an issue, but with the various murders being spoken about throughout the book it makes it hard to recall which one is which. You started in the present, then it jumped to the three main characters as k More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Mar 16, 2011

Kiersten rated it:

I heard Capuzzo interviewed on NPR, and went online to put a hold on the book immediately. The subject, the Vidoq Society, and group of 82 of the world's most famous experts on homicide meet once a month to eat gourmet food and bring justice to homicide victims and their families by re-investigating cold cases. It sounds awesome, and parts of it were, but there were also some not-so-good parts:
1. I liked the three main characters, Fleisher, Bender, and Walter, but I wish that there had b More...

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Jan 16, 2011

Melissa rated it:

Some of the best detectives in the world have enough stories to tell to keep readers gripping the pages, turning to the next one to see what happens next. However, this book was attempted to be told in literary fashion, but unfortunately in dealing with real life, there is a delicate balance to keep it tightly woven to flow nicely. This book was a mess, with the events going back and forth, miles apart from each other, taking the reader away from what was most wanted, the facts. It read like fic More...

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Dec 18, 2010

Kate rated it:

I listened to this on audiobook in the car, and for the first few hours I thought I had found the Best Audiobook Ever. I enjoyed the purple prose, and the characters and situations were so interesting and dramatic I thought it HAD to be fiction. In fact, I kept picking up the audiobook case (unsafe driving) and double-checking that it was, in fact, nonfiction. But pretty soon, I was picking up that case to confirm that my version wasn't abridged, because the story was so frustratingly jumpy that More...

2 comments like (2 people liked it)

Nov 06, 2010

Gail rated it:

The Murder Room is a work of nonfiction about the Vidocq Society, a group of detectives, law enforcement professionals, and crime experts who meet in Philadelphia and re-examine cold cases. It centers especially on three men who helped create the organization: Bill Fleischer, a federal agent; Richard Walter, a psychologist and profiler; and Frank Bender, a forensic artist. Though there are many more members of the Society, and many of them are mentioned, this book is mostly about the three men n More...

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Sep 26, 2010

Cheryl rated it:

I am a fan of murder mystery. I have to admit though that I have not read a lot of true crime novels. I was excited when I heard about this book. A collection of cold cases that the Vidocq Society solves sounded very intriguing to me. The Vidocq Society is comprised of some of the best detectives and others. The main goal of the Vidocq Society is to try and solve cold cases. Some of the members of the Vidocq Society are Bill Fleisher, a former federal agent turned detective, Richard Walter, a fo More...

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Aug 19, 2010

Nancy rated it:

The dustjacket blurb of this book notes that

"Three of the world's finest sleuths -- an FBI agent turned private eye, a forensic artist and ladies' man who speaks to the dead, and an eccentric profiler known as "the living Sherlock Holmes" -- invited the greatest collection of ace detectives from around the world on a grand adventure for justice: to track down the killers in the toughest unsolved murders... The Murder Room draws the reader into the secret invest More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Sep 18, 2011

Robyn rated it:

The first half of this book was a mess. It read more like installments in a newspaper than a coherent narrative, with many observations - especially about the three main investigators - being repeated. Yet, for all of the focus on Walker, Bender, and Fleisher, they remained firmly 2D characters rather than the real-life persons they were. At one point, about 1/3 into the book it seemed as though Capuzzo might be getting to something when he wrote about Bender's muse deserting him, but the next s More...

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Dec 11, 2011

Kam rated it:

One of my favorite sayings nowadays, especially when talking about true stories that are seemingly too good to be true, is: "This has to be true, because Hollywood can't make this up." Even Hollywood seems to be aware of this, given how eagerly producers snap up life stories of interesting people, eager to turn their too-true-for-Hollywood tales into the next blockbuster or award-winner.

Unfortunately - or perhaps fortunately - Hollywood has trouble telling true crime stories. More...

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Oct 16, 2010

Kate rated it:

I did enjoy reading this book. Its three main characters are fascinating guys, and the cases they work on are also fascinating. The book is useful to me in my own work, and there's a modest but solid selected bibiliography at the end that I'm glad to have.

However.

This book reads like a first draft rushed through to press. The lack of editing — and the dire need for editing — scream from every page. A couple hundred pages in, Capuzzo is reintroducing main characters as if the More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Apr 29, 2011

Mike rated it:

This is an excellent book about an amazing group of people and well-written to boot. I must confess that I snagged it off the shelf because it is a "detection"-themed book, but never looked closer than the title/subtitle; as a result it took me a while to figure out that it was not fiction! But, in my defense, I thought that the author was just doing a superb job of story-telling, which, of course, he was.

The key figures in this book are probably better known to the average More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jan 27, 2011

Stella rated it:

I really wish the author had been able to spend more time refining his manuscript. In too many places the book reads like a cheap pulp, which seems especially inexcusable considering that the people and crimes it covers don't need any additional sensationalism and the organization of the events was often confusing with chapters suddenly jumping years, switching to totally different cases and their major players without warning. Even so I found the book difficult to put down. I tend to juggle lot More...

1 comment like

Dec 03, 2011

CasadeSlutne rated it:

I picked this book up at the library because I pick up anything that references Sherlock Holmes in the title. I honestly thought it was going to be a collection of short stories.

Instead, it's the story of the founding members and creation of the Vidocq Society, as well as some of the Society's cases. The Society is a group of 150+ members who specialize in some aspect of the field of crime. They meet once a month to have cold cases (cases that are more than two years old and have More...

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Jun 13, 2011

Aspen rated it:

The Vidocq Society is a real-life cold case detective society made up of law enforcement officers, forensic specialists, and criminal profilers who donate their time and labor to help shed new life on murder cases. The book focusses on the three founders; Richard Walter, a scholar of evil and its psychological markers; Frank Bender, an artist with an uncanny gift for creating sculptures of murder victims and murderers alike; and William Fleischer, a former beat cop, FBI agent, and customs office More...

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Jan 04, 2011

Elaine rated it:

This non-fiction book is really on a very interesting subject matter - the Vidocq Society (a group of forensic scientists and profilers and polygraph experts, etc that help to solve cold cases).

However, the writing in this book is not good. There are lots of places where the exact same information is repeated several times over the course of the book, and this happens frequently.

Also, the writer's sense of chronology is hard to grasp. You really bounce around in time. I More...

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Dec 23, 2010

Elf_owl rated it:

I anticipated liking this book since I like reading about mysteries. However, some sections of the book were just really boring, and I was unable to finish the book. With three main characters, I had a hard time remembering who was who in the beginning. I also didn't like how the cases weren't presented in a linear manner. I realize that in real life people probably work on multiple cases at a time and so nothing is revealed in a linear manner. However, I just ended up forgetting the details of More...

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Oct 06, 2010

Pattie rated it:

It could have been SO much better. I heard the author interviewed on a local NPR show, and he made me want to go right out and get the book.

But it wasn't what I expected, based on hearing the author. We could have done with a lot less about Walter and Bender, and more about the other members, as well as more details about how the Vidoq Society solved (or were unable to solve) the crimes that they analyzed. If there had been a drinking game where you had to take a sip of beer eve More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 13, 2012

Rebecca rated it:

This book is not for the faint of heart. There are some truly dark chapters. I have read other reviews of this book and agree it could be better organized but I think it still deserves 4 stars as the subject matter is so compelling.

This book is a biography (of sorts) of three men in law enforcement with widely different backgrounds. The vision of one, to form a society of the best crime fighters across all agencies to help solve cold cases and help the victims.

The book t More...

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Jul 11, 2011

Jerry rated it:

The Vidocq society is undoubtedly a fascinating subject for a book, especially the three main protagonists detailed in this narrative. Essentially it is a book detailing the personalities of the three founders of the society (especially Richard Walter) as they attempt to solve old murder cases with considerable success.

It's gripping - eventually. The scene setting is longwinded and for the longest time, makes the reader wonder what is going on. It is difficult to make sense of the orde More...

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May 05, 2011

Alicia rated it:

Imagine if you were watching about 5 episodes of "Law & Order" on TV at the same time. And you would watch 20% of one, and then pause it, and switch to another episode. And watch 20 min of that one. And then on to the third. And then when you had done that with all 5, you go back to the first one and watch another 15%. etc.

I don't know about you, but I don't like doing this, and I find it somewhat hard to follow and become dedicated to the story. Or I become TOO dedicated, a More...

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Aug 15, 2010

Carol rated it:

I feel creepy saying I loved this book that deals with murder. Maybe a better word would be fascinated but even that sounds crude in light of the subject matter. I know I'm not alone in wanting to know what makes someone who can kill, tick. I also have a thing for cold cases in both fiction and non-fiction so when I heard about The Murder Room by Michael Capuzzo, I knew it would be on my list. I had read Capuzzo's Close to Shore about a series of shark attacks in 1916 on the Jersey shore. Having More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Sep 21, 2010

Davie rated it:

Wow -- if I had even read one page of this thing in the bookstore before buying it, I would still have my $$$. This book is truly horrifying.

Examples:
"A tear of hatred slowly trilled down his cheek"
"Walter was unsurpassed in his understanding of the darkest regions of the heart"
"After four courses served hot, Antoine LeHavre was ready for revenge, served ice cold" and then on the next page, "As strong as his feelings were, [LeHavr More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Jun 23, 2011

Alice rated it:

Being an avid reader and watcher of true crime and crime fiction, I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I have a new idol now - Richard Walter, and a life goal - be a member of the Vidocq Society. The combination of biographies on the three founders, and the formation and triumphs of the society came together in what must be one of the most interesting non-fiction books I have read. Usually I dip into non-fiction missing out the boring parts, but this book read like a gripping novel that I couldn't pu More...

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