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Tag Archives: audiobooks

“A Death in Belmont” by Sebastian Junger

A couple of weeks ago I drove by myself to and from Denver for a short library conference. Along with Diet Coke, pretzel M&Ms, and Twizzlers, I kept myself company with an audiobook on CD, Sebastian Junger’s “A Death in Belmont” originally published in 2006.

Every few years I crave a true-crime book, and this one about the Boston Strangler came right out of that Dewey number, 364.152.

Junger is known as a nonfiction writer. He picked up this topic because his own family had a connection to the Boston Strangler. When Junger was a little boy in 1963, his parents had a studio built in their backyard in suburban Belmont. One of the subcontractors on that job was Albert DiSalvo, who was convicted of the murders attributed to the Boston Strangler. The day before the studio was finished, a photograph was taken of the Jungers and the men who worked on the job. Junger reflects on that snapshot showing his mother holding him on her lap, with Albert DiSalvo standing behind them.

Junger clearly places himself in this story, but he does a great job of backing up to describe the context, what Boston was like and how the murders impacted people.

He explores a murder done in Belmont at the time that Albert DiSalvo was working on the Junger project just a mile away. A black man named Roy Smith was convicted of that murder, proclaiming his innocence until his death behind bars. In many ways this murder was a typical Boston Strangler job, in others, not. But both Smith and DiSalvo die before full light can be shed on Smith’s case. Junger leads one to believe that Smith was very probably wrongly convicted.

Junger manages to tell this story, graphic details and all, without seeming to exploit the victims or the situation. He introduces a wide variety of people at a perfect pace, setting up a sort of chess board of characters. Kevin Conway, the narrator, maintains an even tone in his reading that reflected Junger well.

I loved “A Death in Belmont” for a traveling companion. I’ve noticed that the books that I most enjoy in audio are those with a strong narrative thread. Junger maintains this well. I was sorry when the book came to an end just before I reached Ogallala. I felt like I’d learned some interesting history, had reflected on the role of race in the early 1960s, and been told a fascinating tale by a fine storyteller.