John Williams from the New York Times checks out “The Midnight Assassin” by Skip Hollandsworth in NY1’s The Book Reader.
Skip Hollandsworth knows his way around a crime scene. For three decades he has written about a wide range of subjects for Texas Monthly magazine, but his most memorable pieces are about bank robbers, disappearing teenagers, murders and other grim events.
His first book, “The Midnight Assassin,” is the chilling story of a series of murders in Austin, Texas, in the late 1800s. The killer at the center of the book struck out against women. He started by targeting African-Americans who worked as servants in the growing city, and eventually turned his unwanted attention to the more socially prominent. Some people at the time believed that he moved to London and became Jack the Ripper, though Hollandsworth doubts that.
Fans of Erik Larson’s 2003 hit, “The Devil in the White City,” about a serial killer who operated against the backdrop of the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago, will find similar pleasures in this mixture of history and mayhem. Hollandsworth does not have the sheer amount of raw material that Larson did, and he does not have a known villain — the murders are likely to remain unsolved. However, if you do not mind turning the last page without knowing who done it, this is true crime of high quality.