Murder in the Neighbourhood by Ellen J Green Series: Standalone
Genres: True Crime
Format: Book
Pages: 320
On September 6th,1949, twenty-eight-year-old Howard Barton Unruh shot thirteen people in less than twelve minutes on his block in East Camden, New Jersey. The shocking true story of the first recorded mass shooting in America has never been told, until now. The sky was cloudless that morning when twelve-year-old Raymond Havens left his home on River Road. His grandmother had sent him to get a haircut at the barbershop across the street - where he was about to witness his neighbor and friend Howard open fire on the customers inside. Told through the eyes of the young boy who visited Howard regularly to listen to his war stories and pour over his stamp collection, and the mother trying to piece together the disturbing inner-workings of her son's mind, Ellen Green uncovers the chilling true story of Howard Unruh - the quiet oddball who meticulously plotted his revenge on the neighbors who shunned him and became one of America's first mass killers. With access to Howard's diaries, newly released police reports and psychiatric records alongside interviews with surviving family members and residents of the neighborhood, A Murder in the Neighborhood will have readers of In Cold Blood, If You Tell and American Predator absolutely gripped.
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Also in this series: The Romance Novel Formula, Midnight Pages, Unburdening: An Abortion and Generational Trauma Memoir
My Thoughts
Told through multiple points of view, this was a heartbreaking, yet fascinating look into the psyches of those that were touched by the tragedy. From the outside, it looks like a senseless act of voilence, and to a point, it is. However, nothing is ever black and white. We see a different side to a killer, evoking emotions that are hard to reconcile given what he’s done. We see the loss of innocence in a boy, spared from death, as he bore witness to something horrific. We see a mother unable to comprehend that her son was even capable of such violence. Sure he went off to war, but this wasn’t a warzone; it was a quiet neighborhood street full of innocent people.
The author has written – very well – a very complex story with both reported facts and eyewitness accounts that filled me with a grim understanding. This was a terrible tragedy, but at the same time I feel as bad for the perpetrator as I do for the victims, in a way, after learning what led up to his breaking point.
Bottom Line
Ellen J Green delivers a poignant, thought provoking true crime novel full of emotional upheaval.
About Ellen J Green
Ellen J. Green is the Amazon Charts bestselling author of the Ava Saunders novels (Absolution and Twist of Faith) and The Book of James. She attended Temple University in Philadelphia, where she earned her degrees in psychology, and has worked in the psychiatric ward of a maximum-security correctional facility for fifteen years. She also holds an MFA degree in creative writing from Fairleigh Dickinson University. Born and raised in Upstate New York, Ms. Green now lives in southern New Jersey with her two children.