Bestial The Savage Trail of a True American Monster

Praised by critics and writers from Caleb Carr to Ann Rule for his fascinating, meticulously detailed true crime writing, Harold Schechter has become "America's foremost pop historian of serial murder" (Boston Book Review). Bestial delivers the high level of "top-drawer true crime" (Booklist) that made his other historical volumes -- Deviant, Depraved, and Deranged -- absolute page-turners. A mesmerizing account of a madman, Bestial chronicles the monstrous deeds of Earle Leonard Nelson, whose twisted violence terrorized San Francisco during the bone-chilling winter of 1926. Tracing Nelson's trail of savage rape and barbaric murder, Harold Schechter lays bare the myth of innocence that shrouded a bygone era, and reveals one of the most notorious fiends of the twentieth century.

Harold Schechter is a professor at Oueens College, the City University of New York, where he teaches courses in American literature and culture. He is the author of the novels Nevermore, a secret history of Edgar Allan Poe, and Outcry, a chilling tole inspired by the legacy of killer Ed Gein. Renowned for his true-crime writing, he is the author of five nonfiction books: Bestial, Deviant, Deranged, Depraved, and, with David Everitt, The A to Z Encyclopedia of Serial Killers. A previous novel, Dying Breath, was written with his wife under the pseudonym Jon A. Harrald. They live in New York state.