The Blooding

Rating:
Summary: A fascinating Orwellian dragnet for a killer
Review: A fifteen year old girl is raped and strangled, her body left along a footpath near an English Village called Narborough. Though a massive effort is launch to find the killer, he remains at large for years. Then the Killer strikes three years after the first murder, killing another young girl in the same brutal fashion, and leaving her body only a short distance from the first. The police do not give up, but this man continually evades detection until several years later Scotland Yard comes a calling with a new tool: DNA. The first time its was used to solve a police case, and to actually track a killer not just to reinforce a case. In a very controversial move, nearly 4000 men in and around the town of Narborough are tested, everyone from teen to old man are 'blooded' meaning their DNA of their blood is tested against the samples of the killer. Never has any police force taken such a massive Orwellian move, compelling every male able to commit the crime to come forward for testing. Even so, the killer continually evades being blooded, but it was a matter of time and dogged police work.

Warbaugh's best work since The Onion Field, may be uncomfortable for some people because of the details of the murders etc, others - believers of the right of individual - will be upset with the Orwellian dragnet, but its a fascinating detailed account that often compels as repels in the same breath.

Rating:
Summary: The first 5-star book I've ever read
Review: A more brutal crime than any treated by Wambaugh's distorted pen, this book details worse than ever the policeman-author's insensitivity to the victim or her family and friends. Instead, as always, the book is replete with charming one-liners over the detective work and the continuation of the case history. Genetic finger-printing, "the Blooding," details the forensics of finding the true killer through DNA analysis. Meanwhile, Wambaugh has his host of private chuckles, as a policeman story-teller sharing jokes among his readership (as if the book was intended for policemen friends). A recluse in the book "has been harder to reach than Marlon Brando." The amount of film used to document all aspects of the case has involved "a trainload." Among the hundreds of townies analysed by the forensics procedure, Wambaugh says "more English blood had been spilled than on the Somme," a WWI battle that claimed a mere million fatalities. When documentation takes such a tenor, I wonder at the truth of his other statements, and whether the true spirit of all detective work is to find the laughter in the thing.

Finally, Wambaugh's own personality splits into a spokesman as well as policeman, when he makes an uncharacteristically compassionate remark that a tragedy had occurred at all. This sensitivity to an actual crime unfortunately stands alone throughout the book, as the rest of the writing provides a mocking parade of the facts.

Rating:
Summary: Pretty good reflection of how we all felt
Review: I lived in Narborough between 1960 and 2004 and was one of first set of people to be tested as my home was less than a couple of miles from the murder sites. Despite much local outrage at this book I feel it does reflect the way we all felt. It is a long time ago now but rarely spoken about. Narborough is still considered a village by the locals - not a town - and this book is well worth a look. If you ever visit just don't talk about it!

Rating:
Summary: An interesting mix of drama and dramatization
Review: I'm not sure of this book's niche. It is a VERY dry read taken as a thriller, yet I didn't find it to be particularly instructive. It is a book that is worth reading for anyone with particular interest in sociopathic behaviour, or the tyrannical government that our forefathers fled to America to escape. If you have no particular interest in these subjects, you may find your mind wandering while you sift through decidedly mundane details that are completely unrelated to the story. And while the book certainly does pick up speed towards the end, I found it rather unsatisfying that the author purposefully leads you off onto a number of dead ends, at great length, merely to illustrate the point that becomes clear on its own throughout the course of the book(police don't know how to deal with anything new, they just run routines). Overall you may find your time spent better with some other works in the same vein(and even by the same author), whether you're looking for an instructive view of the actual policework that goes into such a case, or just an interesting story.

Rating:
Summary: True Story Of The First Murders In The World Solved By DNA
Review: This excellent book details the true story in England of the first murder case solved by DNA. There was no DNA database at the time. Yet the detectives step by step used DNA to exclude suspects until the murderer was "left standing." There was a DNA dragnet with much suspense which the murderer managed to avoid until the very end. This is the true story of the first DNA conviction.

Also, this reader suggests you read the new book "Bloodsworth."
This is the true story of the first DNA exoneration in the USA. These two cases are linked in a very important way.



Rating:
Summary: True story of first murder solved by DNA tests
Review: This story is set in three neighbouring villages with which I am familiar. The crimes were committed in the eighties, but I only came to know the villages many years later, when I worked in Narborough (the middle of the three villages) from 1998 to 2002. I heard occasional references to these crimes, although never any in-depth conversations. Even now, the topic is too sensitive, so the only way I could find out what really happened was via this book.

Wambaugh gives an excellent account of the crimes and the often futile attempts to solve them. Perhaps occasionally it is more graphic than it needs to be, describing the state of the bodies in intimate detail, but its easy to gloss over that (it is in print, not on film) and there's not too much of that. Some of the main characters, including the policemen and their suspects, are described in great detail. While some may feel that this is just padding, I feel it all helps to make it a good story.

Again, plenty of pages are devoted to false leads, but this may help us to understand why detective work is never as simple as we would like it to be. At one point, after the second murder, the police think they've got their man. The parents can't believe that he would do such a thing and it is at that point that the new science of DNA testing is brought in. The parents are convinced their son in innocent. The police are convinced that he is not only guilty of that murder, but also the earlier one. Did the same man commit both murders and was this particular man guilty? The DNA test results eventually provide answers, but to find out what those answers were, you must read the book.