Murderland cover art

Murderland

Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers

 Preview
LIMITED TIME OFFER

3 months free
Try for £0.00
£8.99/mo thereafter. Renews automatically. Terms apply. Offer ends 31 July 2025 at 23:59 GMT.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Premium Plus auto-renews for £8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly.

Murderland

By: Caroline Fraser
Narrated by: Patty Nieman
Try for £0.00

£8.99/mo after 3 months. Offer ends 31 July 2025 23:59 GMT. Cancel monthly.

Buy Now for £16.99

Buy Now for £16.99

Confirm Purchase
Pay using card ending in
Switch payment method
By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. Please see our Privacy Notice, Cookies Notice and Interest-based Ads Notice.
Cancel

About this listen

 'Murderland reads like a true crime thriller . . . [Fraser] makes her case with conviction' SUNDAY TIMES

'Caroline Fraser [is] lyrically luminescent . . . reading her prose can be like skiing powder snow on a perfect day, one lovely turn after another' NEW YORK TIMES

A terrifying true-crime history of serial killers in the Pacific Northwest and beyond - from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Prairie Fires
Caroline Fraser grew up in the shadow of Ted Bundy, the most notorious serial murderer of women in American history, surrounded by his hunting grounds and mountain body dumps, in the brooding landscape of the Pacific Northwest. But in the 1970s and 80s, Bundy was just one perpetrator amid an uncanny explosion of serial rape and murder across the region. Why so many? Why so weirdly and nightmarishly gruesome? Why the senseless rise and then sudden fall of an epidemic of serial killing?

As Murderland indelibly maps the lives and careers of Bundy and his infamous peers in mayhem - the Green River Killer, the I-5 Killer, the Night Stalker, the Hillside Strangler, even Charles Manson - Fraser's Northwestern death trip begins to uncover a deeper mystery and an overlapping pattern of environmental destruction. At ground zero in Ted Bundy's Tacoma, stood one of the most poisonous lead, copper, and arsenic smelters in the world, but it was only one among many that dotted the area.

As Fraser's investigation inexorably proceeds, evidence mounts that the plumes of western smelters not only sickened and blighted millions of lives, but also warped young minds, spawning a generation of serial killers. A propulsive non-fiction thriller, Murderland transcends true-crime voyeurism and noir mythology, taking readers on a profound quest into the dark heart of the real American berserk.

'In this brooding and often brave book, the author finds evil afoot, but the worst monsters aren't who you'd guess' BOSTON GLOBE

'A strange and compelling tale . . . Fraser, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, has the skills to pull it off' WASHINGTON INDEPENDENT REVIEW OF BOOKS©2025 Caroline Fraser (P)2025 Penguin Audio Crime Editors Select Murder True Crime Exciting Scary

Listeners also enjoyed...

 Three Weeks in July cover art
Depraved Obsession cover art
A Schooling in Murder cover art
The Scientist and the Serial Killer cover art
The Umbrella Murder cover art
The Criminal Mind cover art
On the Farm cover art
No More Tears cover art
Waco cover art
Deadly Silence cover art
The Red Ripper cover art
Missing Person: Alice cover art
Erotic Vagrancy cover art

Editorial Review

Is lead the ultimate serial killer?
Caroline Fraser’s new book is quite a topic swerve from her Pulitzer Prize-winning Prairie Fires. This one is for the true crime heads, the rabbit-holers familiar with the strange 20th-century spike in serial killers from the Pacific Northwest. Such obsessives, myself included, might know about the lead-crime hypothesis, which links exposure from leaded gasoline and pollution to fluctuations in violent crime. But we’ve never heard it quite like this, in Fraser’s heady blend of reporting, lyricism, and memoir—she grew up on Seattle’s Mercer Island, where a perilous bridge and her volatile father competed with the local maniacs to wreak terror in her young life. Murderland, which Fraser likens to a detective’s “crazy wall,” combines the chilling exploits of Ted Bundy, Jerry Brudos, Richard Ramirez (who grew up in the plume of an El Paso smelter), Dennis Rader (same, but in Kansas’s “lead belt”), and others with the rage-inducing environmental and human destruction of the smelting industry. While it’s just one piece of a complex puzzle, Murderland left me fascinated, saddened, and hungry for more information. —Kat J., Audible Editor

All stars
Most relevant  
Fascinating and well researched. Difficult to comprehend these disturbed individuals behaviours. Well worth a read or listen.

Informative educational and disturbing

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Terrible but compelling. The end was so dramatic and heartbreaking I nearly wept.
I will not forget this book.

What am incredible listen

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Fraser writes with such elegance that it renders even depictions of the most bloodcurdling events somehow more palatable. Her personal connection to the time and place of the events is what makes this the stuff of literary dynamite; it is simply impossible to take a break from this book. Written with such style and unique perspective, the result is somehow very cinematic, almost akin to watching a film. Phenomenal.

A phenomenal masterpiece

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.