The Murder Room: Not really a review, so much as an assortment of thoughts

I don't often talk here about the books I read – not because I don't often read books, but because I don't often have time to respond to them. Or feel like responding to them. Or feel that my response would be internet-appropriate. As the case may be.

However, I finished one recently that's really stuck with me, in a good way – which is not something one can usually say in all earnestness about a book peppered with gruesome real-life crimes, reprehensible criminals, egregious failures of justice, and just about every disgusting facet of human behavior imaginable on full display.

All of which The Murder Room (by Michael Capuzzo) has going on in spades.

(It's funny. I went poking around looking for more reviews and/or info on this book, and turned up a bunch of people pissing and moaning about how poorly it was written. If it was, I didn't notice. Or if I did notice, it stayed in my subconscious, smoothed over as part and parcel of the author's frankly fannish reporting.)

I'll be the first to admit that I read a lot of revolting nonfiction. I could write it off as "research" (given what I do for a living), but I've always been a morbid sort – and I like seeing my oft-repeated assertion underscored: Real life is so much weirder than any shit I could possibly make up. And real life is usually at its weirdest when it's violently breaking the law. People are at their most irrational, their strangest, and their most impulsive when they've shattered some boundary of acceptable behavior.

I've heard it said that fiction is harder than nonfiction, because fiction is required to make sense. But even the most bizarre behavior makes sense to someone, for some amalgam of split, freaked-out, bloody, violent, murderous, self-injurious seconds.

Anyway. It interests me, this unaccountable "why?"

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[Crossposted from my website. If you'd like to comment, you can do so either here or there.]