Where Shadows Linger: The Untold Story of the RCMP's Olson Murders Investigation

by W. Leslie Holmes, Bruce Northorp

Where Shadows Linger is a compelling study of the dynamics of police work and the challenges of apprehending the first serial killer in Canadian history: Clifford Robert Olson. In the summer of 1981, as teenagers in British Columbia's Lower Mainland disappeared, members of the RCMP swung into action. When they started discovering bodies, they began to wonder if this was the work of a single person. By August it was clear that it was.

Rarely is a police officer willing to review the inner workings of an investigation, warts and all, and disclose the long-term impact it had on those involved. In the Olson case, different circumstances and more sensitive responses to cries of alarm from fellow police and civilians would have saved lives. Author Les Holmes and the Olson case's commanding officer, Bruce Northorp, wrote Where Shadows Linger: The Untold Story of the RCMP's Olson Murders Investigation in hopes of aiding future investigations into serial crimes.

Genres: True Crime

256 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 2000

Reviews

[Fishface]

A really unusual read, well worth the effort of seeking out. Talks about how bureaucratic hassles and the vagaries of the RCMP slowed down the Clifford Olson investigation when they should have long since gotten their man. Includes the complete text of the (probably unique) agreement with the RCMP that paid a serial killer $10,000 for each body he pointed out to the authorities, a timeline of the killer's criminal activities and his winding course through the justice system, and the long-term aftereffects on the investigators of working such a grim and frustrating case, even though the good guys eventually won.

[Dave Van Es]

This book is a good case study of a major RCMP serial killer case, but the way the book was written and/or laid out was really awkward. 3/5