The Murder Room: The Heirs of Sherlock Holmes Gather to Solve the World's Most Perplexing Cold Cases in Reading with Style

Aug 20, 2010 Elizabeth (Alaska) rated it really liked it

Shelves: twenty-first-century

This is the story of the founding of the Vidocq Society and some of its success in solving cold cases. The Vidocq Society is named after Eugène François Vidocq. Vidocq is considered to be the father of modern criminology and of the French police department. He is also regarded as the first private detective.

But it was Vidocq's remarkable story of redemption and his belief in the redemption of others that touched Fleisher most deeply. The chief cop of Paris was a great friend of the poor and sai

This is the story of the founding of the Vidocq Society and some of its success in solving cold cases. The Vidocq Society is named after Eugène François Vidocq. Vidocq is considered to be the father of modern criminology and of the French police department. He is also regarded as the first private detective.

But it was Vidocq's remarkable story of redemption and his belief in the redemption of others that touched Fleisher most deeply. The chief cop of Paris was a great friend of the poor and said he would never arrest a man for stealing bread to feed his family. Vidocq was Hugo's model for Javert, the relentless detective in Les Misérables, as well as for Valjean, the ex-con who reforms and seeks redemption for his deeds.

The Vidocq Society deals only with murder cases. In The Murder Room, you can expect the telling of these cases to be rather graphic. The book includes, in layman's language, the psychological makeup of some murderer types. The personalities of three of the founding detectives is also revealed in more detail than a few of the others whose work is also included.

Some GR reviews have complained of the personalities and the telling of some of the private lives of the founding detectives themselves. Two of the founders, in particular, were not especially likeable. Frank Bender acted upon a very active sex drive, Richard Walter was especially confrontational in his use of language. In answer to a question about whether a police chief was satisfied with the Society, he replied "He was as happy as a pervert with two dicks." Thus, it can be expected that this book will have the reader engaging with the underside of life.

Some have complained about what seems to be a haphazard organization and I admit that at first the book seemed to wander, but I came to understand it and realize any other presentation would have been chaotic. The timeline is a difficult one. There is the founding of the Society (in 1990), together with the background of the three founders, how they knew each other and how they worked with each other. Then there are the cold cases, which obviously happened in the past. The difficulty with this is that the Society encounters the cases in an entirely non-linear order. Cases but a few years cold might be presented before a case 20 or 30 years cold. Some cases were not solved in the first presentation, though the detectives continued to work on them and make progress. This progress is told to the reader in chronological order as Society members had new/better ideas or evidence.

I rarely read true crime, but I was glad to have picked this up. ...more

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