What Caused the Serial Killing Spike of the 1970s and '80s?

A new book offers a rich, informative, but not entirely convincing account of a crime wave.

- By PHILIP JENKINS

Murderland: Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers, by Caroline Fraser, Penguin Press, 480 pages, $32

THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST produced an appalling roster of serial killers in the 1970s and '80s, some of whom claimed very large totals of victims. We think immediately of Ted Bundy, but there is also Gary Ridgway, the Green River Killer, with his likely kill count of 50-plus victims; just over the Canadian border, British Columbia produced the serial child murderer Clifford Olson. By some measures, the region is the most prolific in the history of multiple murder.

Observers have often spoken of an "epidemic" with its epicenter at Tacoma, Washington. It is very hard to track serial killings accurately, especially since some styles of murder are more easily detectable in some eras than others, so it is possible that this apparent spike is partly a statistical artifact. But the number of murderers known to be active in this region in this period is undeniably unusually large.

Caroline Fraser's Murderland explores the crimes of that place and time. It is quirky and sporadically brilliant, bringing together arguments from seemingly unrelated fields of study and combining them in a way that deepens our understanding of mid- and late-20th century America. It's an impressive book that should be widely read. But it also suffers from omissions and logical flaws.