A DEATH IN BELMONT is a departure from A PERFECT STORM. This is more investigative journalism than anything.

The set-up has to do with the murder of Bessie Goldberg, a sixtyish housewife who lived in Belmont, an upper-middle class suburb of Boston. The principal suspect was a black man, Roy Smith. At first, the investigators thought he may be the Boston Strangler. Ironically, the real Boston Strangler, Albert DeSalvo, was working as a carpenter's assistant building an artist's studio only a few blocks away. The artist was Sebastian Junger's mother.

Junger alternates between Smith's plight and the Boston Strangler story. Much of the Strangler information is old hat for me as I had previously read THE BOSTON STRANGLER by Gerold Frank. There are a few nuggets of new information, such as the fact that DeSalvo sold drugs in prison.

Junger contends that DeSalvo never confessed to the Bessie Goldberg murder because a black man was tried and convicted for the murder and that at Walpole, where DeSalvo was serving his sentence, a race war was going on, and if he confessed his life wouldn't have been worth the proverbial plug nickel.

The biographical information on both Smith and DeSalvo was engrossing. Junger took us to Roy Smith's hometown, Oxford, Mississippi. Smith's father was a preacher, but Roy would have been condemned to a life as a sharecropper if he had not migrated north. Oxford, the home of William Faulkner, is a fascinating little town. Junger portrayal of the Jitney Jungle, a chain grocery store, is especially interesting. They sold canned pork brain, hog testicles and ears and jowls, and packages simply labeled "meat." Junger also describes Klan atrocities where black men were burned alive for insulting a white woman. Smith would later insist that he knew better than to "mess with a white woman." Junger also shows us DeSalvo's upbringing in Chelsea, Massachusetts. His father was a brutal wife-beater who brought prostitutes back to the DeSalvo apartment. Albert began his criminal career as a shoplifter, moving on to B&E, finally becoming the Green Bandit who coaxed his way into women's apartment by measuring their dimensions. He would later serve time on rape convictions.

Junger goes into elaborate detail concerning the contention that DeSalvo was really not the Boston Strangler, that he confessed because he thought he'd make a fortune from a book and a movie deal; he went so far as to hire F. Lee Baily as his lawyer. Junger never does come to any firm conclusions about the matter. Some contend that DeSalvo never went further than seduction and that the rape charges were attempts by the housewives he seduced to rationalize their behavior.

Prison rehabilitated Smith. Prior to his conviction, he was an alcoholic who spent time during the day cleaning houses to make enough money to get drunk that night. At Norfolk, a medium-security facility, he became a cook, ultimately being put in charge of over a hundred men. Junger can't make up his mind whether Smith was guilty or not, but the parole board seemed to think he was a model prisoner.

Unreliable witnesses, including Roy Smith, seemed to have complicated the investigation. For instance, Smith said he had just a little over two dollars when he arrived at the Goldberg residence. He also said that he left at ten to four in the afternoon and that Bessie was still alive. Several witnesses testified that they had seen him leaving the neighborhood at just a little after three. Goldberg's husband said he left Bessie fifteen dollars that morning. Smith was to be paid six, yet investigators were able to verify that Smith spent something like fifteen dollars that night. It seems to be that if he was wrong about the time, he could have been wrong about the amount of money he had. The man was an alcoholic after all.

If you aren't familiar with the Boston Strangler case, you'll probably like this book. Even if you are, the Roy Smith material is arresting enough to keep you turning pages. I'll give it between a three and four, and I'm leaning toward four.