I'm a sucker for any true crime content, but I struggled to remind myself why I committed to this book several times while reading it. The story itself is super interesting - a woman named Sherri Rasmussen was murdered in the 80s in her own home, which the LAPD declared a home invasion robbery gone wrong (despite none of the evidence pointing towards a burglary). McGough follows the investigation and the most important person connected to Rasmussen's murder: a female cop named Stephanie Lazarus.

While this had all the makings of a great read, there were some serious faults. First off, the book is looooong. There are so many extraneous details included that it often felt like McGough was simply trying to show off how much research he did, not that the info was actually important to the reader. This long-windedness also came across with how much repetition there was. Events are often described several times (even non-essential events). Because this book was such a slog to get through, I was going to rate it three stars, but then had to knock it down to two when I got towards the end of the book. First, the author spends 40 minutes (according to the Kindle app) on another murder that didn't have a lot of connection narratively speaking to Rasmussen's. This completely took away from the drive of the story. Then, despite sharing nearly every single detail about the case, the (spoiler) trial at the end of the case was relegated to two solitary sentences. I was extremely disappointed with how quickly the story was resolved.

This is a crazy interesting case, but if people are interested in learning more about it, I'd recommend a Google search instead of this book.

The Lazarus Files could have been better written.

Synopsis: On February 24, 1986, 29-year-old newlywed Sherri Rasmussen was murdered in the home she shared with her husband, John. The crime scene suggested a ferocious struggle, and police initially assumed it was a burglary gone awry. Before her death, Sherri had confided to her parents that an ex-girlfriend of John’s, a Los Angeles police officer, had threatened her. The Rasmussens urged the LAPD to investigate the ex-girlfriend, but the original detectives only pursued burglary suspects, and the case went cold.

Very poorly written. True crime is one of my favorite genres, but this book’s writing missed the mark big time. Thanks to Netgalley, the author and the publisher for the arc of this book in return for my honest review. Receiving the book in this manner had no bearing on this review.

True crime is one of my favorite things to read. Sadly, this may be one of the worst books I have ever read. I struggled but I finally managed to finish it.
I feel so badly for Sherri's family. This was poorly organized, very repetitive, and needed major editing. There was far too much unnecessary information. There was even a second murder thrown in at the end, but barely touched on. The connection is unknown until the afterword of the book. Since that murder is unsolved its hard to know if there really is a connection between the two.
All of the unnecessary information made me feel disconnected from the victim and her family. That is really sad as I believe her story deserves to be heard.

WHAT. A. SLOG. This was meticulously well-researched, but often repetitive with no clear narrative structure. Part 3 truly made no sense in the book. This is a bonkers true crime story and would be much more captivating with a stronger edit. #netgalley

I have no listened to podcasts and watched several shows about this case and given that the book has been published for almost a year, and how far back on my TBR it's been pushed I'm most likely not going to end up reading this.

This was a very interesting book that takes a look at two cold cases. The main subject of the book was the Sherri Rasmussen murder and the way the investigation was handled.. The author did a wonderful job of presenting all the facts of the case that were available. to him. The time period in Los Angles that it took place and the turmoil in the LADP was a contributing factor in all likelihood. The author also wrote about a second murder in the book that just seem to be out of place. The two case were only connected by the time period and the united that investigated them both. The book didn't really need the second case in my opinion and could have been done in another book. Over all this was a good book for anyone interested in criminal cases.

I would have rated this a five star read except for the the number of diary entries and interviews that seemed unending and became a distraction after a time. Sometimes less is better. Aside from that issue, I found the book to be an intriguing depiction of the investigation and the main players, both the investigators and the suspect.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for providing an ARC copy of the book. The opinions expressed above are my own.

This was, by far, the most detailed true crime book I’ve ever read! Naturally, therefore, this took a long time to get through. Anyone interested in getting to the main crux of the crime can very easily sift through chapters, or skim sections, and still learn what happened because many of he details were repeated throughout. The author did implacable research and did a great job laying out the facts and not interjecting opinion or guiding the reader down a certain path/narrative.

Since I oversee an investigation devision at a small police agency, I ate up every fine detail. There were several cringe-worthy moves on the part of LAPD—with this case as well as one other homicide, described toward the end of the book. How they looked past some of the most obvious clues and physical evidence is mind-boggling. Regardless, the family was able to see justice finally served, but a cold-blooded murderer was a free woman for WAY too many years. Regardless of her profession, she never should have slipped through the cracks as a prime suspect!

Well worth the time it took to get through!!

The murder of Sherri Rasmussen was a horrific act that devastated countless people. She was vivacious, well-liked, and outgoing. If you are going to read one book this summer, grab this one, it is a masterpiece.

When Sherri was murdered, no one could figure out who had done it. Although there were some who had their suspicions, it was not until many years later that the truth finally came to light, and when it did, it left an entire community in shock. The murder had been committed by John's ex-girlfriend, someone who was to uphold the law - she was a police officer.

This book was an "oh good heavens, what am I reading" novel. I was horrified at the precision that Stephanie undertook, and the very callousness that she held within her. Her obsession with John led to the murder of an innocent person.
As for the husband - don't even get me started. More than once (probably more than 100) I wanted to reach into the book and shake him senseless.

Get the book, and read it. It will leave you in a roller coaster of emotion. It was fabulously written!

It’s almost as if two crimes are committed inside these pages: the first is the premeditated murder of Sherri Rasmussen, and the second is this atrocious book. How many writers can take a compelling story—that of a cop killing her romantic rival, and her arrest and conviction—and make it this dull? So I still thank Net Galley and Henry Holt for the review copy, but nothing and nobody can make me read anything written by this author again. It appears that very few reviewers even forced themselves to finish it; those of us that soldiered on till the end either deserve commendations for our determination, or a mental health referral for not cutting our losses.

The book’s beginning comes the closest to competent writing as any part of this thing. We get background information about Sherri and John’s courtship and marriage, as well as John’s relationship with the murdering woman he scorned, Stephanie Lazarus. Don’t get me wrong; I am not saying this part is well written. Even here, there are serious issues with organization and focus, yet I continue, believing that when we get to the meat of the story where the truth is revealed and the killer arrested, tried and convicted, it will be worth the wait. In that, I am mistaken.

The author wanders anywhere and everywhere, apparently unwilling or unable to exclude one single fact about anyone, even those tangentially involved. Why do we need pages and more pages devoted to the life and times of people the victim barely knew? To add insult to injury, many of the facts he’s uncovered are inserted into multiple places in the narrative in a way that emphasis doesn’t justify. It appears as if he is attempting to reveal a cop cover-up, but his inner attorney forces him to equivocate, hinting throughout without ever reaching the punchline. He infers that maybe Sherri’s husband John knows more than he’s saying, but again we see innuendo everywhere without an accusation being made outright. The writing is riddled with clichés. In many places he tells us how one character or another feels, or what they are thinking, and yet there are no citations anywhere for anything; this is a cardinal sin in writing nonfiction. I go to check the notes at the end of the book and there are none. The copious gushing over Sherri’s excellent character and intelligence, while it sounds warranted, is salted so liberally over 597 interminable pages makes me wonder if there is a connection between the author and the victim’s family, but again, if it’s true, he doesn’t say so. All told, it’s a very unprofessional piece of…writing.

By the time I consider abandoning this thing, I have put in the time required to read over a hundred pages, and so I see it through. I skip the section about the murder of someone else; had it shown up before I was completely disgusted, I’d read it in case it provides strong evidence to back up what the author is inferring but not saying, but as it is, I just want to get to the meat of the matter and be done with this thing.

Imagine my surprise when the Rasmussen murder case is not reopened, and Lazarus is not investigated, arrested, tried and convicted until…the epilogue.

From start to finish, there is not one redeeming feature of this book. It’s a train wreck from the start to the blessed ending. If I feel this way after reading it free, how might you feel if you paid money for it?

Twenty-three years and the crime has finally been solved. Not because there is new evidence but because Detectives Nuttall, Bub, Barba and Martinez were willing to take the case where the evidence led them. Even if it was one of their own.
Does the Blue wall exist in police departments? Most definitely. DNA evidence proved that the bite mark on Sherri Rassmussen's arm was female. Yet, the Detective in charge consistently said her murder was perpetrated by two male, mexicans during a robbery. This was what was investigated all those years. Meanwhile the murderer, Stephanie Lazarus is working amidst these people. People who had been given her name. Yet, they refused to follow the leads.
Nels and Loretta Rasmussen lost a daughter. She was a vital part of people's lives. She was a daughter, sister, aunt, nurse, friend and briefly a wife. She had so much to give, so much to offer.
This is an exceptional well written book. It has lots of details, and feeling. You feel, disappointed, aggravated, anger and sadness.

A highly detailed book about the murder of Sherri Rasmussen and how a cold case was solved 23 years after the attack. I first heard about this case on the Casefile podcast which featured the murderer’s police interview. McGough dives deep into this case and features the murderer’s own diary entries and case file notes.

I could not handle the dry, lifeless delivery. What could have been an interesting narrative wasn't because of the style. It's dense, methodical, and chock full of details, facts, information. So if you're really interested in this specific case, this book is perfect. But for your average true crime reader, skip it.

Disclaimer: I received this ARC from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Being from the LA area and a true crime aficionado, I was excited to dive into this book. However, with it coming in around 500 pages, it at times became tedious and repetitive. I thought the case itself was fascinating, I just wish the book had been about 200 pages shorter.

In 2009, a decades-old cold case, the 1986 murder of Sherri Rasmussen, a young newlywed nurse in Van Nuys, heated up when a suspect was finally arrested. As in many recent cases, new testing of old DNA evidence - here, an allegedly misplaced swab from a bite mark on Sherri's arm - was the key in solving it.

The murderer was more unusual - a female LAPD detective, a position she'd also held at the time of the murder.

"In April 2008, about a year before she was arrested, I had actually met Lazarus at Parker Center, the LAPD headquarters, and interviewed her at length for a book I was planning to write about art theft, Lazarus's beat at that time. My chance encounter with Lazarus made me intensely curious to learn the truth. Did a respected police detective really commit murder and carry that secret for her entire career?"

At the time of her arrest, Stephanie Lazarus was a detective in the enviable art theft division. As cold case detectives homed in on her, they had to employ special methodology to ensure nothing leaked, and that Lazarus couldn't look up information about the now-active case while at work, something they suspected she'd been doing over the years.

Lazarus's connection to Rasmussen was through the latter's husband, John Ruetten, Lazarus's college friend and former hookup buddy. She couldn't let him go and began stalking and threatening Rasmussen, even showing up at the hospital where she worked.

Rasmussen's friends and family were suspicious and pressed detectives to investigate her, but they were set on a burglary theory. A friend points out the patently ridiculous oddities here, like why Rasmussen would take on two men with a gun in a vicious fight rather than try to get away. They also ignored these potential witnesses, failing to interview most of them and later claiming that the Rasmussen family, who had repeatedly contacted police and mentioned Lazarus (her name is in the case file) hadn't actually contributed any information or leads.

There's an argument to be made about the responsibility the LAPD had to investigate one of their own, and McGough seems to be making the case that they didn't follow through on this, and rather may have actively pushed the investigation in another direction - doubling down on their theory that it was a botched robbery based on the arranged crime scene in order to avoid focusing on Lazarus.

To this end, a second story is suddenly covered, that of Catherine Braley, whose murder is suspiciously connected to LAPD detectives in a somewhat confusing attempt to make a case for corruption or lack of due diligence when fellow officers are involved.

But in 2008-9, in addition to maintaining total secrecy in the investigation to avoid alerting colleagues, "... [detectives] promised one another that they would follow the trail of evidence wherever it led." How awful that it took more than two decades before that method was used.

"The code of silence influences the behavior of many LAPD officers in a variety of ways, but it consists of one simple rule: an officer does not provide adverse information against a fellow officer...Officers who do give evidence against their fellow officers are often ostracized and harassed, and in some instances themselves become the target of complaints."

I figured that since the investigation around Lazarus was such a fascinating, intense story (Mark Bowden did a fantastic longread on it), much of the book would cover that. Instead, it occupies a comparatively minuscule portion, with the majority filling in the backstory of the women's lives in exhaustive detail, including excerpts from Lazarus's diaries after joining the force. It's not particularly revealing, beyond showing that she's a bit narcissistic with some empathy issues, and illustrates the major problem of this book: an overabundance of unnecessary details.

A few end up being atmospheric, like that a friend of Sherri's remembers hearing "These Dreams" playing from inside the funeral home. But mostly, the amount of detail overwhelms, and leads to a disjointed, confusing narrative. You try to hold onto some in case they end up being important later, but they usually don't, and there's just too much.

The review copy was over 600 pages long, entirely too long even for such a compelling case. It's admirable that McGough did justice by Rasmussen by fleshing out who she was and how friends and family felt about her - their recollections of her life and so on, but much of this was painfully minute or irrelevant, detracting from a cohesive narrative.

The case story itself is bloated with minutiae and repetition. Information is repeated so much that I wondered if I accidentally bookmarked the wrong page and was rereading, or remembering it from elsewhere (this case has gotten thorough coverage on crime shows and the news, partly thanks to Lazarus's cringeworthy tricked interrogation video). It was an editing failure, although the writing has a basic, just-the-facts tone that doesn't help.

There's an informative sideline into the recent history of women in the LAPD, even more pertinent when Lazarus joined, perhaps highlighting the significance of her position in history. It was only in the mid-1970s that "female LAPD officers would no longer be required to carry their firearm in a department-issue purse, but could wear a holster on duty." In 1971, they were deemed "no longer wanted or needed by the LAPD", partly because they supposedly couldn't be trusted with guns while having periods, and ultimately not a single woman joined the LAPD between 1970 and 1973.

"It became apparent that this story was not a whodunit. The evidence presented at trial proved Lazarus's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. The unanswered question that loomed over the trial and persisted in its wake was how Lazarus got away with murder for so long."

This is true. Yet the majority of the book doesn't address that question, despite the effort at linking detectives involved with Rasmussen's case with Braley's, and some inexplicable side delves into things like the Night Stalker, which has nothing to do with Rasmussen.

There's a thoroughly researched good book in here somewhere, but I'm not sure it's worth wading through the masses of information, repetition, and disorganized narrative.

I received a copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I'm going to push the pause button on this title. I just cannot seem to get in to the very fine details that McGough has collected. I can tell that he has done an incredible amount of research on this book, but it really bogs down the story. When I reach for a true crime book, I want the facts hard and fast and I want to know the essential points of the story. This unfortunately isn't the case with The Lazarus Files.

Maybe I'll pick it up again in the future.

I haven’t slept well the past few nights because I stayed up pass my bedtime to read and finish The Lazarus Files, by the non-fiction writer, Mathew McGough, out on April 30th. I simply couldn’t bring myself to put the book down. Occasionally I would let out ‘Oh My Gosh – did they really,’ or ‘the poor thing,’ most often I rumbled along the lines ‘do your job LAPD.’ My husband would throw me a cautionary look ‘what’s wrong?’ but it would be left unanswered. I was knee deep in a murder investigation.

On Monday, February 24, 1986, Sherri Rasmussen, an impressive young woman with a bright future and a recent newlywed was gruesomely killed in the condo she shared with her husband. Sherri had the world in the palm of her hand, but evil couldn’t stand to see her happy. She had been shot three times in the chest, she had sustained a head injury and a nasty bite mark too, when detectives arrived on the scene, after her husband came home from work and discovered her lifeless body, they quickly concluded that Sherri had fought mighty with her killer, unfortunately, it wasn’t a battle she won. On that day, no one could have predicted that it would take thirty years for Sherri’s killer to be found.

But if killing an innocent person who was beloved by so many wasn’t devastating enough, here is where Sherri’s story turns darker, convulsive, conspiratory. Sherri’s family suspected John’s ex-girlfriend to have had something to do with Sherri’s death, who weeks before had shared with her parents that she felt watched. Stephanie Lazarus, the ex, even showed up at Sherri’s work and threatened her. Stephanie by all accounts had a motive to kill Sherri. Then how come LAPD detectives refused to pursue Stephanie Lazarus as a suspect? They refused to investigate her for thirty years. The caveat, Stephanie Lazarus was an LAPD police officer, who was well-liked and respected by the brass.

It will take the bravery and tenaciousness of a few detectives within the department to reexamine a case gone cold and Mathew McGough was our eyes and ears. He began writing the book in June 2009 and diligently kept up researching and writing the Lazarus Files for the next nine years. The book, a true crime, is the product of a meticulous mind, who left no stone unturned. He spoke with a roster of names to piece it all together.

By the time I reached the final pages of the Lazarus Files, I felt breathless. The book is out April 30th and it’s riveting.

The Lazarus Files came to me as an advance readers copy through NetGalley and the publisher, Henry Holt and Co. I went into it blind, knowing nothing about the Sherri Rasmussen murder case, whether the book was based on a single case or several, and why the name Lazarus was used in the title.

Thus, it was confusing when, after a lengthy background section on Sherri Rasmussen (going back several generations in her family); on her beau John Ruetten; and one of his friends Stephanie Lazarus (now I'm catching on to the title!), there was a sudden switch to a chapter on the Night Stalker murders. This was a lengthy passage -- 50 to 60 pages -- and seemed to serve merely as context, since the two cases were contemporaneous, but without any relevance to the Rasmussen saga.

So, was I reading about cold-case murders in general, or about Los-Angeles-area-murders? Where were we headed?

Again, much later in the book, there is a second abrupt interruption of the book's momentum, in a highly-detailed chapter on another murder victim, Catherine Braley. It is not until the book's final pages that we glimpse any relevance to the Rasmussen case.

These are quibbles about form, rather than content, but they illustrate a point that numerous reviewers have made: There was so much good material in this book, but overall it suffered from the choppy and disjointed narrative layout.

Matthew McGough is a very good writer. After finishing The Lazarus Files, I researched a bit and found a September 2011 long article published in The Atlantic magazine on the same case, titled The Lazarus File (singular). The writing there there is crisp and compelling, and the facts are laid out with an innate order.

Which leads me to focus my quibbles on the publishing house and its editorial staff. Whose idea was it to repeat eight or ten long passages two, three or four times, inadvertently insulting the readers' intelligence (yes, yes, we got all that first time!) and slowing the flow of the story?

What there is to admire about this book is the meticulous research. It became clear that the author was not just reporting on an old case -- he was building a new one: on the many, many investigative missteps made by the LAPD in Sherri Rasmussen's and, yes, Catherine Braley's murders.

This book was an excellent depiction of the investigation into the cold case murder of young nurse and newlywed Sherri Rasmussen. Savagely beaten and killed in 1986 in the condo home she shared with her new husband, John Ruetten, Sherri's death went unsolved until 2009. The book details the mishandling of the case by the Los Angeles Police Department, during a time when the agency was embroiled in controversy for other incidents. The murderer herself, in this case, was none other than an LAPD officer, Stephanie Lazarus, a former lover of Sherri's husband.

Matthew McGough goes into minute details about the LAPD and its history of abuse and nationwide controversy during the years leading up to the murder and afterward. Some may find the book much too detailed, but in my opinion, it was important to document so much about the LAPD and its history to put it into context with what played out during and after Sherri's murder. Many times I've found too much detail in a book to be distracting and boring; in this situation, it was so well-written that I was fascinated throughout. Also, because I didn't remember this case at all, I was enthralled throughout to find out what happened and the outcome of so many years of negligence on the part of the LAPD.

My only disappointment in the story, which had nothing to do with the book itself, was that there was not enough info as to what actually happened in the condo the day that Sherri was murdered. I have many questions about that day, but the only person who really knows is the murderer. And she's still not talking.

Thank you to NetGalley and Henry Holt and Company for an ARC in exchange for my honest review. 5 stars.