Sebastian Junger's family added an addition on to their house as an art studio for his mother. One of the construction workers was Albert De Salvo, who turned out to be the Boston Strangler. Ellen Junger spent a lot of time with Albert, sometimes eating lunch with him, when he took a break from working. There was one incident where it seemed Albert tried to lure Ellen into being secluded and alone with him, but Ellen avoided him. There was a woman murdered in the same way that many of the victims of the strangler were blocks from their home. Another man was arrested for that murder, but everyone always wondered if Albert had done it. The man arrested and convicted always proclaimed his innocence and Albert always denied he killed Bessie Goldberg. With both the accused and Albert De Salvo dead, the question remains today who killed Bessie Goldberg? ( )

Not my usual kind of book, but very well done. Completely absorbing history combined with the author’s personal connections with the events as a child growing up in Belmont, the next town over from mine. Some questions unanswered as is always the case. ( )

A Death in Belmont felt like reading a newspaper piece. It has facts. It has objective postulations. It leaves the reader to form her own opinions. The the hook is that the author has a personal connection to the story, but there is little intimate or personal about it: no indication that the author feels anything more than journalistic curiosity. There are glimmers of passion, but the "personal" part is missing. It's fascinating if you know nothing of the Boston Strangler saga, but overall, it falls a little flat. ( )

I've had this book on my shelf for ages, and suddenly it was the right time to read it. Junger is tangentially connected to the case of the Boston Strangler, and this is an insightful and somehow inconclusive retelling of the investigation. In so,e ways it reads like a mystery story, where the police are hard pressed to figure out who the murderer is, and the case is not clear even at the end ( )

(10) Having grown up proximate to the locales discussed in this book likely made it much more enjoyable for me. My hometown was even briefly mentioned. This is Junger 's (journalist who wrote 'the Perfect Storm') recounting of the murder of Bessie Goldberg. She was killed in her home in Belmont and her neck was wrapped with her stocking just like all the murders of the so-called Boston Strangler. This was 1963 and the black man who was hired to clean the house and left a mere 45 minutes before the husband came home and found her was obviously the main suspect and ultimately committed. But did he do it? Who was actually the Boston Strangler? Could it have been the handyman who worked for the Jungers in Belmont? The man who had been alone in the house with his own mother on numerous occasions?

I have never read anything about the Boston Strangler case and frankly had been trying to avoid this true crime genre for awhile. It makes me feel unclean and guilty to be interested in others gruesome tragedies, right? So this was an interesting mystery explored journalistically and read like fiction; read like popular fiction. Lots of zingers about society and information was doled out in chunks as the story flipped around in time and to the two different suspects. Ultimately, the truth cannot be known and this is a bit of a let down.

I would recommend this for an engaging book that doesn't require you to think too much. It is easily read and well written (for the masses.) It does a nice job with the historical setting and brings in some interesting commentary regarding the role of juries, prison as rehabilitation, and of course, the ever ubiquitous theme of racial justice. ( )