'A Death in Belmont' is a hard book to pigeonhole

"A Death in Belmont" by Sebastian Junger is one of the most unusual books I’ve ever read.
I suppose the best label for the nonfiction book (WW.Norton & Co., 266 pages) is "true crime," but the book also comes close the categories of biography, history and social science. In places, it reads like a news story, in others like a memoir and in others like a novel. It reminded me of Truman Capote’s "In Cold Blood," the granddaddy of them all when it comes to "true crime" books. Regardless of how you pigeonhole the book, it’s worth reading.
In "A Death in Belmont," Junger, famous for his earlier book, "The Perfect Storm," tells the story of how his family hired Albert DeSalvo in 1963 to help build an addition to their home in Belmont, a suburb of Boston. On the surface, DeSalvo appeared to be unremarkable, just a quiet Italian-American handyman. All of that changed two years later, when he confessed in lurid detail to being the Boston Strangler, a serial killer thought to be responsible for the deaths of 13 women from June 14, 1962 to Jan. 4, 1964 in the Boston area.
Junger’s book focuses on his family’s dealings with DeSalvo and describes his actions on the day that 62-year-old Bessie Goldberg was murdered a few blocks from the Junger home in Belmont. (To date, Goldberg’s murder is the only homicide to have ever taken place in Belmont. The police, having never dealt with a murder, documented the crime on traffic accident report forms.)
The book also details how Roy Smith, a black man from Oxford, Miss. who had cleaned the victim’s house that day, was ultimately arrested, tried and convicted of the crime. Smith essentially died in prison for the crime, having his sentence commuted on his deathbed by Mass. Governor Michael Dukakis. Smith died two days later, on Aug. 21, 1976 at Lemuel Shattuck Hospital of Stage III large-cell bronchogenic carcinoma, a lethal cancer that had spread to his lymph nodes.
I thought the book was interesting because Junger took his family’s connection with DeSalvo and turned it into an in depth look at the Boston Strangler, serial killers, race and American justice. I also found the book interesting because, to be honest, I knew very little about the Boston Strangler murders, although I’d heard a little bit about them over the years. (If you’re looking for a book on the Boston Strangler, this is the one.)
Will "A Death in Belmont" be read 100 years from now? I think so, mainly because of the author’s connection with the killer and the examination of DeSalvo’s dealings with the Junger family. The book is also instructive because it demonstrates how innocent people like Roy Smith are sometimes convicted of crimes they didn’t commit. Despite his claims of innocence, circumstantial evidence sent him to prison for years.
In the end, I enjoyed the book and I recommend it to anyone in the reading audience with an interest in the Boston Strangler, serial killers and murder investigations. I also think that fans of Junger’s earlier works, "The Perfect Storm" and "Fire," will enjoy the book. On a scale of 1 to 10, I give the book an 8.0.