The Riverman

its fair to mention that this book was recommended to me by a friend and I am grateful that is how much i enjoyed it. I didn't enjoy it because the subject matter was easy breezy, I enjoyed it because the way it was written i couldn't put it down.


Every now and again, a true crime book appears that delivers even more than it promises, and Robert Keppel's remarkable book belongs in that category.
Before I praise it too highly, I should state that despite the title, this book is most definitely not a retelling of Ted Bundy's career as a murderer. Keppel was a detective in King County, Washington in 1974 when Bundy first came to the attention of law enforcement. Accordingly, Keppel focuses on some of Bundy's earliest known murders: the Lake Sammamish victims and the young women who ended up at body dump sites near Issaquah and on Taylor Mountain. But Keppel gives very little attention to Bundy's crimes in other western states; Bundy's escape from jail in Colorado; or his final crime spree in Florida. So for those of us who know little or nothing about Bundy's monstrous murders, this book almost serves to confuse rather than enlighten. But this criticism is tempered by the wealth of information that Keppel does give us.