In 1963, with the town of Boston already terrified by some savage crimes referred to as the Boston Stranglings, a murder occurred in the peaceful suburb of Belmont, just a couple blocks from the home of Sebastian Junger’s family — a murder that appeared to fit exactly the pattern of the Strangler. Roy Smith, a dark man who acquired cleansed the victim’s home that time, was arrested, tried, and convicted, but the terror of the Strangler continued.

Two years later on, Albert DeSalvo, a handyman who had been about A Death in Belmont working at the Jungers’ house on the day from the Belmont murder, and had often spent time there alone with Sebastian and his mother, confessed in lurid details to being the Boston Strangler.

This is actually the point of entry to Junger’s first book-length project because the Perfect Storm: a narrowly averted tragedy for Junger’s family opens out into an electrifying exploration of race and justice in America. By turns exciting and delicate, the narrative chronicles three lives that collide — and so are ultimately damaged — in the vortex of one from the first and most controversial serial murder instances in America. The energy of the story and the brilliance of Junger’s confirming place this book on the short shelf of classics beside In Chilly Blood and Helter Skelter.

Read by Kevin Conway