The author is looking into why this young person joined a group of other soldiers in committing a bank robbery. Being told it was part of training or just wanting to do it because a superior told you to be involved or was there another reason? Who knows what I got out of this book was still it was a choice at any time he could have said no, heck he could have laid down when they walked into the bank, or even before he could have walked away when they began talking about it? Why does someone commit a crime that is the real question and I really don’t think anyone has that answer.

While Alex’s story is pretty outrageous, Ranger Games goes deeper into the Army’s training methods, specifically for the Rangers. And, how the Ranger methods and philosophy could help turn a happy-go-lucky kid into a bank robber. It’s a little overly long, but would make a perfect Dad, Husband, or Father-in-Law gift.

(from my 2017 Holiday Gift Guide)

The past few years have seen a spate of true crime narratives that have captured the American imagination, most of which were produced as serialized documentaries on streaming channels or as podcasts. “Making a Murderer.” “The Witness.” “Something’s Wrong with Aunt Diane.” “S-Town.” “Serial.” “The Keepers.” The list of true crime narratives is seemingly endless at this point, with new ones being announced seemingly every month. Some of the crimes took up months of news coverage during their original trials. Other, little-known crimes, such as the mystery at the heart of “S-Town,” have created a market for writers to find their own subject to document and present to the public.
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Ranger Games
by Ben Blum
BARNES & NOBLE
INDIEBOUND
AMAZON
IBOOKS
At the time that “Serial” and “S-Town” were released as podcasts, it felt impossible to go on social media without reading someone’s reaction to each week’s revelations. Before the big reveals, it seemed as if everyone had a theory as to whodunnit. The popularity of these true-crime narratives has been stunning.
What drives the general public’s attention? Is it really the conclusion – knowing who committed the crime? It’s unlikely, as many of the crime narratives that are out there are propelled forward by the “whys” rather than the “whos.” That is: Why this victim? Why was the crime committed? It’s these “whys” that sit behind three new literary releases in this genre.
Ranger Games by Ben Blum is bound to be the focus of a lot of reviewers’ attention and discussion. Blum’s dense, documented memoir is an attempt to understand what drove his cousin, Alex, who had recently gone through Special Forces training to become a U.S. Army Ranger, to participate in an armed bank robbery. His initial finding: that Alex has been “brain-washed” by his Ranger training to take orders from his immediate superior, who planned the robbery, is sure to cause a lot of debate among veterans and civilians alike.
Is it possible that the brutal training that Alex endured, training that Ben Blum documents in horrific detail, could have led to the complete breakdown of any sense of right or wrong by young Alex? Alex had dreamed of serving as a Ranger for years. He opted to go into the army right out of high school, and indicated to his recruiting officer that he intended to apply to Ranger School as soon as he finished basic training, which he did. Blum argues that his nineteen-year-old cousin had gone from living in a small town in Colorado to the army without any other adult experience and was unprepared for the toxic masculinity and brutally repressive atmosphere of Ranger training.
So adamant was Alex about being a Ranger that he refused various entreaties by his father to spend two years in college before joining the military. His father wanted Alex to at least consider the possibility of other subjects that might be of interest to him other than being a Ranger, but Alex, who had followed a strict diet, no-alcohol, and intense exercise regimen all through high school in preparation for joining the services refused. He even refused a bribe of $20,000 and the chance to travel around Europe that was offered to him. All Alex wanted was to serve his country.
Which is why, less than a year after joining the military, his arrest for bank robbery made no sense to anyone who knew him. His cousin Ben, who was a physics graduate student at the time, set out to figure out what happened. Many of the early conclusions in Blum’s book are based on Alex’s prison writing, but as Blum continues to investigate the other Rangers who were involved in the robbery that day, he begins to see holes in Alex’s story. What he finds will further muddy the water for those who wonder what kind of men the military services are producing.
true-crime-addictIn James Renner’s True Crime Addict, readers are brought back to the 2004 disappearance of Maura Murray, a UMass student who disappeared from an icy road in New Hampshire. When Murray wrecked her car by slamming it into a snowbank, the owner of a nearby house told her he was calling for help. In the time that he was in the house calling the police, however, Murray disappeared. Renner saw mention of Murray’s case on an episode of “20/20” and it stayed with him, compelling him to investigate.
As he shows in True Crime Addict, a number of oddities about Murray’s family, the immediate events that led up to Murray getting into her car that night, and her vanishing’s possible connections to unsolved serial killings soon turn Renner’s investigation into a Chinese finger trap. He is left vulnerable to those who want him to stop his investigation. As Renner ignores warnings to drop it, bad things start to happen at home, creating a sense in the reader that Renner has gotten himself into a dangerous quandary of his own making.
hot-oneFrom there, we’ll take you to The Hot One by Carolyn Murnick. Murnick shared the experience of many girls. As an adolescent, she had a best friend, Ashley, with whom she expected to be buddies forever. It was the type of intense friendship typical to adolescent females: the girls spent countless hours together, having sleepovers, sharing secrets and plans for adulthood. As often happens, though, as the girls passed through high school and as they met other people and took other classes, the friendship splintered. In their early twenties, they saw each other rarely. And then, at age twenty-two, Ashley was murdered after being stabbed to death.
Murnick sets out to answer a number of questions, springboarding from the notion that unpacking their friendship’s demise will help her to understand Ashley’s death. Murnick starts with the assumption that, somehow, Ashley’s decision to pursue acting in Los Angeles, and her further choice to become what Murnick calls a “party girl” had led to her brutal murder by stabbing.
At times, Murnick writes about Ashley as if she were an object who was incapable of making decisions for herself, and she pursues the idea that Ashley’s death was related to her lifestyle, looking, I think, for an answer that would indicate that young women who play by the rules are less likely to run into the kind of trouble that Ashley got into. It is the unraveling of this idea in Murnick’s thinking that is the most interesting part of the book, her coming-to-terms with the randomness of violent crime and of how little control any one of us has to prevent being in the wrong place when a killer goes looking for his next victim.
These three books all present their readers with questions that verge on the rhetorical. What causes someone to commit a crime? And what are the things that people do that make them more likely to be the victims of a crime? As a culture, if we possessed evidence-based real answers to these questions, perhaps we could live in a crime-free world, but guessing people’s motivations for criminal behavior is like a game of Whack-a-Mole. We just don’t have the skills to map our own brains, and the attempt to apply rational answers to emotionally based behavior seems a near-impossible job.

An exeptional young man enters the elite US Army Ranger training program, succeeds in his goal to become a Ranger, and robs a bank just before his first deployment. This book fascinated me in the examination of the psychological and social impact militry training has upon our young adults. As the author tried to understand the motivation of a superior officer who led the robbery and that of the new Ranger who folloed him along with other, non-miltiatry individuals, the narrative twists back on itself at many levels, and basic questions regarding loyalty, morality, leadership, and even the role of family in a soldier's life. At once heart breaking and riveting, this book played in my mind, compelling me to finish it, and stayed for weeks afterward as I pondered the military's training programs and the subsequent fitness of a verteran to live in the society he/she trains to protect.