Maniac - Review

Author: Harold Schechter

Genre: True Crime

Format: eBook 

Pages: 254

I received a digital copy from Netgalley for an honest review.

This is one of those books that you know how it's going to end when you start it. It's right there in the title that something horrid is going to happen. Still, as I got to the actual part of the book about the mass killing of school children in Bath, Michigan my heartbroken and couldn't stop reading until I actually finished the book. Though this is the second book I've read by Harold Schechter, this is the one that will stick with me for a while.

What I really liked about this book was how Harold Schechter wrote it. It isn't just facts thrown onto the page and organized in a dry timeline. Instead, Schechter tells the story in pieces. He lays the foundations by telling us the history of Bath, Michigan, and of the Kehoe family. As a reader, you get introduced to people in the town. It's written kind of like a puzzle where you get all the pieces and slowly you see the picture it's forming.

I also really liked that the chapters were small. Schechter draws you a picture of this moment and of this person, then moves on to the next. Sometimes with True Crime, I feel like there is a lot of reputation of facts or a reiteration of something that's already been established. That isn't the case with Maniac and that's what, in my opinion, made this so easy to read. It moves through the timeline of events leading up to the bombing and somehow builds a bit of suspense, at least for me since this is one true crime story I hadn't read.

Another thing I liked about Maniac was how it wasn't just about Andrew Kehoe, the man behind the bombing. Harold Schechter has a whole section about the aftermath of the bombing. He talks about the families, the town, and about other similar crimes that followed. Rarely in the true crime books I've read I have seen that. This wasn't just a book about what drove Kehoe to kill 38 school children, it was also about those that survived, and how this was the start of a horrid trend in our country. So I thought it was great that readers were able to see how Bath, Michigan moved from this terrible event, but never really forgot.

My only real negative about this book was there was a couple of chapters for me that felt like they didn't fit. There were two chapters dedicated to Charles Lindbergh, and I understand that his flight is one of the reasons the Bath School Bombing was pushed out of national headlines, but I didn't feel it warranted two chapters about a man who really had nothing to do with the bombing. There was also a chapter about another crime that set up to explain why the Bath School Bombing was lost to history in a lot of ways, but I didn't honestly feel like we needed an entire chapter dedicated to that crime. I feel like all three chapters pulled away from the events being told and were just sort of the throwaway. In fact, I didn't even read the chapters on Lindbergh and only skimmed the other one.

All-in-all I enjoyed this book and felt it well researched and well presented. Schechter doesn't shy away from the facts or the gore of this book, which there is a bit of gore here and there but nothing excessive. Is it a bit unsatisfying at the end, yes but that has nothing to do with the writing, or construction, of this book. Sometimes the bad guys get an easy end. 

Maniac: The Bath School Disaster and the Birth of the Modern Mass Killer is set to be released on March 8th, 2021!

HAPPY READING!!