Tracks to Murder

True Crime History

by Jonathan Goodman

A witty and informative look at classic American murder cases On a 6,000-mile train trip across the North American continent from New York City to the West Coast, then back to New York over a southern route, prizewinning English crime historian Jonathan Goodman visited a number of sites where notorious murders occurred―the Kingsbury Run torso murders in Cleveland; the murder by “thrill-killers” Leopold and Loeb, the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, and the escapades of Al Capone in Chicago; the Henwood-VonPhul-Springer affair in Denver; the murders of Marian Williams and Blanche Lamont in the Emmanuel Baptist Church in San Francisco; and Kate Townsend’s murder in New Orleans. Goodman masterfully fuses two literary genres that reach back into the nineteenth the true crime essay fathered by Thomas De Quincy and travel reports popularized by Charles Dickens and Mark Twain. As a true crime book, Tracks to Murder is witty and informative and enriches these classic American murder cases by placing them within their original settings. Goodman also plays them against their locations as they are today, resulting in a series of character sketches both contemporary and historical. As a travel book, it presents the seasoned reflections of a cultivated English writer on American manners and morals observed during his serendipitous transcontinental journey.

Genres: True Crime, History

198 pages, paper

First published May 30, 2007

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Jonathan Goodman was one of Britain's leading historian of crime. The American critic and historian Jacques Barzun described him as "the greatest living master of the true-crime literature", and Julian Symons, another big name in true-crime, thought of him as "the premier investigator of crime past".

His career as a full-time writer began in the 1970s when he edited the Celebrated Trials series which itself was a successor to Notable British Trials. Then in the 1980s, he worked on numerous anthologies, such as The Railway Murders (1984) and The Seaside Murders (1985), often persuading his many friends to provide a chapter and then writing a short introduction. He also continued to research old murder cases, writing books on the Newcastle upon Tyne murder of Evelyn Foster, the New York locked-room mystery of card-playing womaniser Joseph Elwell and, in 1990, The Passing of Starr Faithfull, the daughter of a Manhattan society couple whose body was washed up on Long Beach, New York, in 1931, for which he received the Crime Writers' Association's gold dagger for non-fiction.

He is most well known for uncovering a solution to Britain's most baffling real-life whodunnit, the murder of Julia Wallace in Liverpool in 1931; he not only exonerated the dead woman's husband but identified and traced the man he believed to be the real murderer. This was documented in The Killing of Julia Wallace (1969).

Reviews

[Fishface · Rating 3 out of 5]

More of a travel book than a collection of true-crime stories. The British author zigzags across the country to see the places where famous old crimes occurred, so he can get a feel for the settings. He is not interested in anything that happened recently -- he goes to Denver to discuss the Isabelle Patterson case, not JonBenet Ramsey, and visits Atlanta without ever mentioning Wayne Williams. Strangely, he also visits New Orleans without mentioning the Axe-Man, which I would have expected to be right up his alley, especially after his discussion of the Cleveland Torso Murderer. He does give a clear sense of how the various cities impressed him, leaves us with some colorful portraits of local characters and provides nicely-compressed mini-hiostories of all sorts of crimes. Absolutely hilarious in spots.

[Sean · Rating 3 out of 5]

Goodman is a true crime author. His "The Killing of Julia Wallace" and "The Stabbing of George Harry Storrs" are excellent true crime books which I have enjoyed. The book at hand has a great premise: a British true crime author travels across America visiting sites relevant to famous American crimes. That said I wouldn't recommend this to the average true crime fan or the average travel fan. To this particular enthusiastic true crime fan, somewhat travel fan, this book garners 3 stars. A decent read, but unlikely to be revisited.

[Jessi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jonathon Goodman gives short vignettes about true crime while traveling around the United States by train. None of the stories are in depth and that's part of what makes this book so good. Very easy to put down and pick right back up.