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Steve Jackson's research for his book Monster must have been exhausting. He describes events spanning from 1982 to 1998 in convincing detail. The subject of this book is Thomas Luther, a complicated and sociopathic man who raped, assaulted, and sometimes killed a series of women between Colorado and West Virginia.

Of course, the book jacket uses "includes 12 pages of shocking photos!" as a selling point. I nearly put it back on the shelf; I hate that. (Were the photos shocking? Nah.) I doubt that's Jackson's fault, though, so I won't hold it against him.

The story begins in the middle. It's 1993 and the bright future of 20-year-old Cher Elder has been extinguished somewhere in the mountains of Colorado. Lakewood Detective Scott Richardson is on the trail of a suspect, an ex-con named Tom Luther. Chapter two jumps back to Breckenridge 1982, when two young women disappeared within hours of each other. Annette Kay Schnee was last seen alive hitchhiking along Highway 9, trying to get back to her cabin in Breckenridge. Bobbi Jo Oberholtzer was also last seen hitchhiking on Highway 9, later that evening.

Bobbi Jo's body was discovered the next afternoon. She'd died of exposure and blood loss. The cheery 29-year-old had a flex-cuff (those plastic cuffs cops use) on one wrist and had been shot once.

Annette's body was not found until 1982, when an 11-year-old boy discovered her deep in the woods, facedown in a stream. She had been shot once, in the back.

No one has ever been charged with the murder Bobbi Jo and Annette, but Jackson leans heavily towards Tom Luther. And he supports that with some good evidence: Luther was in the area, and Luther had a history of vicious attacks against women.

Back to Cher Elder. Detective Richardson spent two years tracking down evidence against Luther and trying to get the players in this drama to reveal where Luther had buried her.

He finally succeeded and in January 1995, Cher's body was recovered from a shallow grave in the Arapaho National Forest.

Luther was indicted in March 1995 by a Jefferson County grand jury. Jackson follows the trial and while the investigation was interesting, the dynamics of the trial really opened my eyes to how The System works.

District Attorney Dave Thomas sought a death penalty conviction for Luther. But while 11 jurors voted to convict Luther of first-degree murder, a 12th evidently refused to even discuss it and held out for second-degree murder.

In People v. Lewis, 676 P.2d 682 (Colo. 1984), the Supreme Court determined that when a jury is deadlocked over the degree of guilt, rather than declare a mistrial, a judge could direct the jury to return a conviction on the lesser charge, in this case second-degree murder.

The 11 jurists were furious with the 12th; the second-degree murder finding left Jefferson County District Judge Christopher Munch with no option to impose the death penalty. He did, however, give Luther 48 years, the maximum penalty for second-degree murder.

Jackson found a good story and clearly did some meticulous research. For that, I recommend the book. His execution, however, was less than stellar, and I don't think this would be a fair review if I didn't point out a few things that struck me as a reader.

First, it's obvious that a lot of Jackson's information came from recorded and transcribed interviews. That's a great source and I have no problem with it. What I did have a problem with was:

Luther laughed, "Nah. I can't trip like that no more. What the police did wasn't right. But two wrongs don't make a right. I still have little "stinges' [sic] of anger, but I can't grow personally if I keep trippin' on how to blow up Summit County."
"Anything you want to add, Tom? For policemen?"
"Yeah, go find the real criminals," he said, "and do what you have to do to them instead of some guy who's a first-time offender and has got a whole bunch of problems. Everybody arrested for a violent crime doesn't need to go to jail-that's what the public wants, but you have to look and see what the "outcast" [sic] of that is going to be."

Those [sic]s are Jackson's, not mine. Now you see the problem? It made reading a little stilted, to say the least.

The other issue I'd take up with Jackson is his presentation of his characters. Another quote:

"Well, I don't wanna make ya mad," Richardson said sarcastically as he walked toward the car, still holding his tape recorder in his hand where it could pick up the conversation. "I've never seen such a defensive group of people over a missin' person in my life."
Luther wasn't backing down. "Well, you keep shootin' them little innuendos, you know what I mean, about us bein' defensive..."

Not only do Detective Richardson and Tom Luther speak this way, just about every person in the book is quoted using this type of language. It makes all of them sound uneducated. And while I recognize that people really do speak that way, one of the rules writers are supposed to learn early in their careers is that written dialogue rarely appears as it's truly spoken.

Droppin' the final "g" and, you know, leavin' in the pauses, makes the reader work too hard.

So that's my take on Monster.