lection

monster

27 august 2024

I was scrolling through lists of classic true-crime books. One that kept coming up, but that I'd never read (or heard of?) was Steve Jackson's Monster (1998). The lists aren't lying; Monster is a major achievement. It is disturbing as all hell, but if you're drawn to true crime, you're hardly expecting a classic of the genre not to be.

Jackson centers the tale on 1993 and later, with the murder of a young woman named Cher Elder in Colorado. Elder had led an uneventful, optimistic life. She just happened to get into the wrong car with the wrong man after a bit of a squabble with another guy she'd been dating. The wrong man was Tom Luther, the monster of the book's title.

Luther would be convicted of killing Elder. He had been convicted of sexual assault before that murder, and would be convicted of rape after (but before the Elder trial). He remains a suspect in several other killings, all of young women he'd probably given rides to. If you turn all the way to the last page of the book, a 2023 afterword, there's a strange anticlimactic twist that no fiction writer would have thought plausible. It does not detract from the main story and even makes it more intriguing in some ways.

Like many another serial killer, Luther maintained friendships with men and a long-term relationship with a woman, Debrah Snider, who is central to Jackson's narrative. As so often, a mysterious dynamic takes shape. Luther was capable of interacting with Snider – not very often functionally, from her account, but at least not homicidally. And in return, she remained loyal to him for a very long time despite being aware that he was a killer. The combination of sickness and supportiveness on both sides is baffling but perhaps all too human.

Monster, like many true-crime books, does seem a bit protracted. Jackson's feat in reconstructing a long, complicated multi-state investigation is very impressive. But in the cause of thoroughness, Monster advances on a wide front, and spends a lot of time on material that is parallel, or truly tangential, to its main story.

I am not sure how Jackson created the book. The 2023 Kensington edition has no footnotes or index, and is poorly proofread. Clearly Jackson depended on direct interviews with many principals, who are briefly mentioned in the acknowledgments. But any apparatus remains outside the covers of the book, which is a large trade paperback of 565 pages as it is, so that may be a good thing.

Jackson, Steve. Monster. 1998. New York: Kensington, 2023.

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