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The Heirs of Sherlock Holmes Gather to Solve the World's Most Perplexing Cold Cases
by Michael Capuzzo
Thrilling, true tales from the Vidocq Society, a team of the world's finest forensic investigators whose monthly gourmet lunches lead to justice in ice-cold murders
Three of the greatest detectives in the world--a renowned FBI agent turned private eye, a sculptor and lothario who speaks to the dead, and an eccentric profiler known as 'the living Sherlock Holmes'-were heartsick over the growing tide of unsolved murders. Good friends and sometime rivals William Fleisher, Frank Bender, and Richard Walter decided one day over lunch that something had to be done, and pledged themselves to a grand quest for justice. The three men invited the greatest collection of forensic investigators ever assembled, drawn from five continents, to the Downtown Club in Philadelphia to begin an audacious quest: to bring the coldest killers in the world to an accounting. Named for the first modern detective, the Parisian eugène François Vidocq - the flamboyant Napoleonic real-life sleuth who inspired Sherlock Holmes - the Vidocq Society meets monthly in its secretive chambers to solve a cold murder over a gourmet lunch.
The Murder Room draws the reader into a chilling, darkly humorous, awe-inspiring world as the three partners travel far from their Victorian dining room to hunt the ruthless killers of a millionaire's son, a serial killer who carves off faces, and a child killer enjoying fifty years of freedom and dark fantasy.
Acclaimed bestselling author Michael Capuzzo's brilliant storytelling brings true crime to life more realistically and vividly than it has ever been portrayed before. It is a world of dazzlingly bright forensic science; true evil as old as the Bible and dark as the pages of Dostoevsky; and a group of flawed, passionate men and women, inspired by their own wounded hearts to make a stand for truth, goodness, and justice in a world gone mad.
"The cases...are fascinating, but Capuzzo (Close to Shore) loses much of his narrative momentum by abruptly shifting between the founding members' individual back-stories and homicides the society investigates." - Publishers Weekly
"Terrifying, engrossing, inspirational and surprisingly funny." - Kirkus Reviews
"Novelists know to be wary of those slices of reality that are just too outlandish to be transformed into the stuff of fiction. In the superb and tantalizing The Murder Room, Michael Capuzzo dares readers to believe the can-they-really-be-true stories of the heartbreaking cold cases that have been investigated by the forensic dream team that is the legendary Vidocq Society. The once forgotten crimes are horrendous, each bigger-than-life detective more outrageous than the next, and the circuitous paths they take to find long-delayed justice are impossible to forget." - Stephen White
"Once again Michael Capuzzo shows he is one of our most brilliant storytellers. The Murder Room is a gripping page turner, masterfully drawn and full of truth, dedication and darkness." - Michael Connelly
This information about The Murder Room was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Born in Boston and educated at Northwestern University, Michael Capuzzo is the author of the acclaimed New York Times bestseller Close to Shore, a historical thriller of the true story that inspired Jaws. Winner of many writing prizes as a syndicated columnist and a staff reporter for The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Miami Herald, and for stories in magazines including Sports Illustrated, Esquire, and Life, he lives in Pennsylvania, where he and his wife publish a prize-winning storytelling magazine, Mountain Home.
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