Eli Stutzman’s crimes would have made great material for a true crime novel, with his Amish upbringing and the queer counterculture of the 1980s providing a rich backdrop, but Olsen wastes this opportunity. He spends too much time on details of people and places that aren’t really central to the story. It’s an attempt to shock the reader by way of equating Stutzman’s gayness with the severity of his crimes—“Look how gay this f*cker is, of course he killed people!”—when the exploration of Stutzman’s very real depravity could have been much more nuanced, robust, and compelling. The quotes from homophobic law enforcement officers—whom Olsen somehow thinks are quotable in the 21st century—just drive home the author’s discomfort with the subject matter. At best, a scatterbrained book; I am an addict of true crime novels but I gave up rewinding this one trying to keep all the inconsequential names and dates straight. Skip it!