A Death in Belmont: Book summary and reviews of A Death in Belmont by Sebastian Junger

A Death in Belmont Summary

In the spring of 1963, the quiet suburb of Belmont, Massachusetts, is rocked by a shocking sex murder that exactly fits the pattern of the Boston Strangler. Sensing a break in the case that has paralyzed the city of Boston, the police track down a black man, Roy Smith, who cleaned the victim's house that day and left a receipt with his name on the kitchen counter. Smith is hastily convicted of the Belmont murder, but the terror of the Strangler continues.

On the day of the murder, Albert DeSalvo—the man who would eventually confess in lurid detail to the Strangler's crimes—is also in Belmont, working as a carpenter at the Jungers' home. In this spare, powerful narrative, Sebastian Junger chronicles three lives that collide—and ultimately are destroyed—in the vortex of one of the first and most controversial serial murder cases in America.

A Death in Belmont Reviews

"Starred Review. This perplexing story gains an extra degree of creepiness from Junger's personal connection to it." - PW.
"An intriguing crime story that also contains painful truths about race and justice in America." - Booklist.
"A meticulously researched evocation of a time of terror, wrapped around a chilling, personal footnote." - Kirkus.

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Sebastian Junger Author Biography

Sebastian Junger grew up in suburban Massachusetts, not far from the town of Gloucester, the fishing port depicted in The Perfect Storm that was home to the Andrea Gail and its crew. He graduated from Wesleyan University with a degree in cultural anthropology in 1984 and has been a freelance journalist whose work has appeared in such magazines as Outside, Men's Journal, American Heritage, and The New York Times Magazine. Drawn to stories of adventure, Junger has delivered radio reports from the war in Bosnia, covered smoke jumpers in Idaho's wilderness wildfires, and written about the smallest border town in Texas. In addition he has for many years worked as a high climber and trimmer for tree removal companies. He currently lives in New York City...

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