48 pages • 1 hour read
Murderland: Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers
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Important Quotes
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of graphic violence, illness or death, and sexual violence.
“Earthquakes are murderers, invisible until they strike. The OWL is Washington’s shadow San Andreas, lying beneath bridges and tunnels, waiting to toss them like pick-up sticks.”
(Introduction, Page 4)
Throughout the book, author Caroline Fraser depicts the geologic features of the Pacific Northwest as an active, malicious force. In this passage, the comparison to murderers (the book’s subject) suggests that the dangers inherent in the movement of Earth’s crust (and the resulting natural disasters) are part of her argument. The reference to “pick-up sticks” reflects the indifferent nature of this violence. This passage introduces The Violent Nature of the Planet and Weather Phenomena as a theme.
“The lake is not only worryingly deep, at two hundred feet, but essentially has no fixed bottom, no floor except for a soggy miasma of silt that cannot support concrete pylons. The engineers are untroubled by local legends told by the Duwamish Tribe about the lake’s habit of swallowing islands. They know better.”
(Part 1, Chapter 1, Page 25)
The opening chapter references two bridges in the Seattle area as evidence of the connection between geology, industry, and violence. In this passage, Fraser suggests that the engineers who built the Mercer Island Floating Bridge believed they could out-engineer problems with the landscape and disregard centuries of local wisdom. Ultimately, the bridge collapsed, though another was built to replace it.
“Instead, the town on Commencement Bay, considered one of the five best natural harbors in the world, chooses industry at every turn […] battening on the smoke and stench of wood pulp and paper mills, lumberyards, oil refineries, chemical plants, rendering plants, sewage tanks and smelters. Soon their waste and effluent and slag heaps are strewn beside the bay and across the Tacoma tidal flats like offal dropped from a raptor’s nest.”
(Part 1, Chapter 2, Page 32)
This passage juxtaposes the boom of industry in the early 20th century with the natural beauty of the Pacific Northwest. The long string of industrial centers in the first sentence (mills, refineries, plants) contrasts with the natural imagery (bay, tidal flats, raptors) in the second sentence. This juxtaposition reflects Fraser’s belief that the industrialization of the Pacific Northwest in the 20th century was an unnatural process.
