The Murder Room

The Murder Room is a book based on the Vidocq Society. It was formed by three friends, William Fleisher, Frank Bender, and Richard Walter.

As you read through this book, you are going to be blown away by some of the cases that they cover. But you are also going to get a look at what the men behind this amazing society are like. Richard Walter I think was my favorite. He is someone that I would love to sit and have a conversation with. Frank Bender - you love to hate him, but he would still be interesting to chat with. William Fleisher is another you could sit and have coffee with for hours.

Now, as you delve into The Murder Room, you discover what makes these men tick. Find what caused them to look for the justice that was lost. Then you will cry over the cases. So many heartbreaking cases that cry out to be solved. There are so many out there that have yet to find closure, but someone knows something.

I absolutely LOVED this book! I wanted more. I was not ready for it to end. I read at any chance I could get, and I could not devour the pages fast enough. This is one of my top reads for the year. Finally, for those that love true crime, this is a book you CANNOT miss!

Grab a copy, and discover the heartbreak and redemption found in this story.

One of my favorite sayings nowadays, especially when talking about true stories that are seemingly too good to be true, is: “This has to be true, because Hollywood can't make this up.” Even Hollywood seems to be aware of this, given how eagerly producers snap up life stories of interesting people, eager to turn their too-true-for-Hollywood tales into the next blockbuster or award-winner.

Unfortunately - or perhaps fortunately - Hollywood has trouble telling true crime stories. For some odd reason, film is too distancing a medium for true crime. Even television has a similar effects. One would assume that, with all that violence up close and personal, as it were, right there for the viewer to see in all its gory glory, film and television would actually be more immediate, not distancing.

And yet it is in literature and journalism - perhaps the most “distancing” of storytelling mediums because of the absence of concrete images - that convey true crime with the most disturbing and chilling immediacy that film and television have difficulty accomplishing. I suppose the same rule that applies to horror and erotica applies to true crime as well: if one does not see a concrete image, the imagination goes to work, and when the imagination goes to work, what it produces is generally more terrifying or erotic than any image that can be produced by artist or director.

However, never let it be said that film and television have not left their mark on storytelling - whether that story be fiction or nonfiction doesn't really matter. Increasingly, writers of the 21st century write in a manner that reflects the principles of storytelling as seen in movies and television shows: cut-scenes, jump-cuts, cliffhangers, and all the rest - though, to be fair, these principles were already present in the popular serialized novels of the nineteenth to early-twentieth centuries. A story that once might have been told in a straightforward manner, from Point A to Point Z, may now be told somewhere at Point M, with flashbacks showing what has gone before, and, maybe (depending on the writer and the story, of course), dreams and premonitions showing what might happen from Point N onwards. Even in nonfiction, this cinematic sensibility for telling a story has become quite prevalent, and, in the writing of true crime stories, it works quite well - most of the time. The Murder Room by Michael Capuzzo, for instance, however, did not belong to those books that get this right “most of the time,” it took me a while to realize that what I was reading was nonfiction, and not fiction, after all.

In truth, the whole concept behind it struck me as something that might have come out of the mind of some semi-inspired, novelist or screenplay writer: a group of the best detectives in the world (though mostly from the United States) come together on a regular basis to solve cold cases - the cases that are deemed unsolvable. No case is too cold, no victim too small, and no criminal too cunning for the men and women of the Vidocq Society, hailed by Capuzzo in the subtitle to this book as “The Heirs of Sherlock Holmes.”

Perhaps that subtitle contributed to the idea that this was a work of fiction. While I understand - and enjoy - the hyperbolic nature of the titles of some nonfiction books (take The Grand Inquisitor's Manual as a title for a historic overview of the history of the Inquisition, for instance), this one caught me off-guard. Was it the link to Sherlock Holmes? Perhaps it was, to a certain degree. The question of whether this was fiction or nonfiction extended into the first two chapters: Capuzzo's style was such that I almost wondered if these people he was mentioning were real. It was not until I'd cleared the second chapter that I'd realized what Capuzzo was doing. In writing this nonfiction account of a real-life society, Capuzzo had chosen to write in the style and format akin to that of detective fiction - specifically in the style of Doyle and Poe, with just a little Hammett and Chandler thrown in for variety. Once I had figured that out, I gave myself room to settle into the book and accept it as a creatively-told tale.

While this book could have been written as a straightforward casebook of the Vidocq Society's most notable cases, telling each story in the same manner that Doyle told the Holmes short stories, Capuzzo does something different. Instead, he chooses to tell the beginnings of the Society via its three founding members: William Fleisher, Frank Bender, and Richard Walter. In what might be called a semi-biography of sorts, Capuzzo writes about how each man found himself involved in the acquisition of justice; the cases that led them to find each other; and later on the crimes that they, along with key members of the Society, would solve when nobody else could.

It helps that each man is quite the character unto himself. Fleisher is often described as a big softie, prone to shedding tears of emotion - the classic bleeding heart, one might say - and yet also capable of getting just about anyone to like him and work with him, too. Bender is described as a mystic, mercurial and unpredictable, but with an uncanny ability to reconstruct the faces of the long-dead, using just a few bones and his intuition. And then there is Walter, Bender's direct opposite: cold and calculating, and yet possessed of the deepest insight into the evil lying in the darkest corners of the criminal mind - “a living Sherlock Holmes.” On Fleisher's initiative, they set up the Vidocq Society (Walter joined, despite his reluctance), and gathered together the most brilliant minds in criminal investigation in the United States to solve, free of charge, the cases no one else could solve.

I do not know, however, if this is really how these men are in real life. There is an aspect of the mythic archetype here, something which comes out in the last few chapters of the book as a joke at a Society meeting. Nevertheless, they do make for very engaging characters. Some readers may find themselves drawn to Fleisher and his bleeding heart; others may find Bender's intuitive creativity and free-wheeling lifestyle to be more to their taste. For my part, however, I have a marked preference for Walter: cold and calculating, perhaps, but he has stared into the abyss, the abyss has stared back, and Walter has walked away with a knowledge of the criminal mind that he wields like a blade. His cynicism is shocking, and some might say to be pitied, but I do think he is rather the optimist, in his own way: he views the world in sharp black and white, and is aware that if there is evil in this world, there must certainly be good, and since he knows what evil is, he will use that knowledge to protect what is good. If that is not optimism, I do not know what else it might be called.

Interwoven with the personal stories of these three men are the cases they and the rest of the Vidocq Society have worked to solve. Although the Society's members have worked on some very notable cases, the cases that have been for the most part documented in the book appear to be the ones that are the most personal to Fleisher, Bender, and Walter. I suppose this should come as no surprise, since they are the “protagonists” of this book, but I also appreciated the fact that Capuzzo includes cases that I had not encountered before, which had all the power and impact of some of the more notorious serial killings that the Society members (both before and after they became Society members) have helped solve. The stories also serve as an excellent vehicle for meeting the other members of the Society, some of whom turnout to be quite unique characters as well, though they do not stand out as much as the three founders.

And here is where I run into a bit of a concern with the book: it does not quite comfortably straddle that line between casebook and biography. This manifests in the rather confusing way the cases in the book are organized: a case may have been introduced in an earlier chapter, and then so much more happens before the reader gets to the resolution of that case. In the meantime, two or three more other cases may have been introduced, or a digression into the personal lives of Bender or Walter or Fleisher, or other Society members, or even the victims or criminals, occurs. This has left me rather dizzy in trying to determine what case the Society is on and who is currently on it, and being dizzy in what I think of as something of a mystery novel is not pleasant in the least.

There are also some issues regarding repetition. More than once I had a sense of deja vu when a chunk of dialogue I had read earlier in the book suddenly makes an appearance, almost word for word, in a later chapter. I do not know if this is a flaw of my copy, or if this was deliberate, but just like the disorganized nature of the rest of the book, it rather stood out in an uncomfortable manner.

One final thing that I noticed was that there was not much on Fleisher. Though it might be argued that, as the Commissioner of the Vidoqc Society, he must have a rather large role to play in the story, the book mostly revolves around Bender and Walter. I do not know why Capuzzo did this, but it does seem rather odd to me that only Bender and Walter would get the spotlight. Surely Fleisher was doing something interesting at more or less the same time that his colleagues were solving their cases? Surely he was good for more than just bringing people together and sending them out into the world to dispense justice? While I am rather biased to Walter, I would have liked to see more of Fleisher.

To say that this book is a Hollywood movie in the making is a bit of an understatement. In fact, I rather wonder if Capuzzo did not write it with that goal in mind. While it is quite an entertaining read, and insightful in its own way, the lack of organization is quite distracting, and irritating on more than one level. I would have vastly preferred it if Capuzzo had just done a straightforward casebook of the Vidocq Society's most notable cases - that, I think, would have been far more enjoyable.