I requested this one because it might be an upcoming title I would like to review on my Youtube Channel. However, after reading the first several chapters I have determined that this book does not suit my tastes. So I decided to DNF this one.

I’m not sure about this book. The story telling around the serial killer, Tony Costa, was great and I was really compelled by it. But so much time was also spend talking about the authors Kurt Vonnegut and Norman Mailer, and I have no idea why they were included to the extend that they were. We basically got Vonneguts entire life story, when all needed to know (and even that is pushing it) is that his daughter met the killer once, and that he covered the trial. Same with Mailer- we learned about practically his whole repertoire, and even got a sort of epilogue about his later life. Those things had absolutely nothing to do with the serial killer story, and should have been omitted.

I could not force myself to finish this. First of all on NetGalley it said this was around an 11 hour audiobook but when you start it, its over 15. I might not have requested it if I had known that length. The author narrates the audiobook and based on what I listened to I was not a fan. I never listen to books in 2x speed but could not listen on regular speed and kept increasing the speed until I got 2x. I found the story hard to follow and got about 5 chapters in and was so confused and bored. I wanted to like this but I can't force myself to continue.

A true crime story that is really too long. The author is thorough. During the Author Notes he does explain he has taken some creative liberties. Given that he used court documents, etc., I'm assuming it was in chat dialogue.

The audiobook was said to be 11.5 hours when I requested it. Turns out it is over 15 hours. The author narrates the book. Actually my least favorite narrators are those reading their own material. Kudos to
Casey Sherman, I think he was perfect given the text and style.

This was really too much information. However, it is one stop shopping. He covers everything. This reads like a textbook. It was more than I wanted to know. It is a four star book.

Thank you NetGalley and RB Media for accepting my request to read and review Helltown.

This felt really well-written and researched. The overshadowing of this serial killer by the Manson murders was a bit wild. I also found the interweaving of Kurt Vonnegut and Norman Mailer to be really weird in the best way. It was just such an interesting true-crime story.

Pub date: 7/12/22
Genre: true crime
In one sentence: Tony Costa, the serial killer of Cape Cod, has long been overshadowed by Charles Manson - this is the story of his crimes.

Since I love Cape Cod and true crime, this book seemed like a perfect fit. I'm glad Sherman brought Tony Costa's crimes to a wider audience, with a focus on the victims' lives who were lost. Sherman also intertwines this narrative with the stories of Kurt Vonnegut and Norman Mailer, both of whom were living in Provincetown at the time. There are some connections, as the novelists use Costa's crimes to try to gain additional fame - but ultimately the book suffers from his trying to do too much. I think cutting some of the Mailer/Vonnegut content would have made for a stronger narrative.

That being said, I enjoyed Sherman's narration and listening to this book on audiobook walks. 3 stars for a true crime story of which I was previously unaware!

Thank you to Recorded Books for providing an ALC in exchange for an honest review.

Grisly, Gruesome, Brutal…
Tony Costa - serial killer, Cape Cod. Grisly, gruesome, brutal. True. An audiobook account of the shocking crimes that plagued a community in the sixties which will stay with the listener for some time to come. Endless, exhaustive research makes for a compelling narrative which has been heightened with fictionalised dialogue and an excellent sense of place. Narration is well done and works admirably, particularly for this genre.

This author clearly did a lot of research and I kept wondering how I had never heard about this case since it was so brutal but I guess I can see how it got over shadowed by the Mason Family.

This book works for real True Crime buffs but would be way too much for people new or just not super into the genre. It's also extremely long and while some stories require that, I think this one could have been edited.

I would read more from this author but hopefully with a different narrator, this one was pretty monotone.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the ARC.
This was a confusing nonfiction true crime book.
I think the author should possibly have had someone else read the audiobook. Maybe a little less monotone.
Lots of research went into this but it was also just a bit confusing.
I have mixed feelings on this one.

Uh yeah. WOW.
I have read quite a few true crime books in my 50+ years of reading. I have read books about murder, death and dying, autopsies and body farms. NONE [and this is saying something] of them have made me as queasy and uncomfortable as this book did. I spent most of the book being completely grossed out, which was something I was really unprepared for. The descriptions of the crimes [while the killer was performing them and then again during the trial] is brutal and graphic and unflinching and well, you need to have balls of steel to deal with it without being grossed out.

The story itself is crazy - the twists and turns that the case takes and the roller-coaster ride the cops have to try and find both the bodies and the truth is gripping. The fact that at least three bodies were never talked about during the trial is infuriating. WHERE is the justice for those dead girls and their families? I guess it is in where the killer ends up at the finish of the book, but I think that is a poor substitute for their families.

There are parts of this book that absolutely DO NOT WORK. WHY the author felt the need to include Normal Mailer and Kurt Vonnegut into this story is beyond me, nor was the story of Edward Kennedy and Chappaquiddick beneficial [this story was used to show how stupid the DA was, but it just muddled the waters even more - it is mentioned and then *POOF* nothing more and it was an unneeded distraction from the story that completely interrupts the flow]. The addition of the two men completely interrupts the flow of the story and I found myself wondering over and over just what they contributed to it. Even more confusing was the brief introduction and mention of Charles Manson and the Tate Murder. I am STILL trying to figure out why that was in the book.

All of that is why this book is only 3 stars [and really, should only be 2 stars, but the story, minus the gore, is very compelling and it just is not a 2 star read] and to be fair I cannot really recommend this to everyone. You have to have a really strong stomach and an ability to sort through all the nonsense to get to the real crux of the story - if you have that and a serious tenacity to weed out the meh, then this is the read for you. If not, I suggest you stay away, far, far, away.

I was granted an audiobook ARC of this book. Sometimes, authors should not narrate their own books and that is the case here. The author's staccato way of speaking, the way he often rushes sentences and then has longish pauses that randomly crop of, this makes for a choppy listen.
Is is the worse narrator I have ever listened to? No. Not even remotely. Was it an enjoyable listening experience? Also no [and not just because of the subject matter]. I will say I listened to the whole thing so that is something. ;-)

Thank you to NetGalley, Casey Sherman, RB Media/Recorded Books, and SOURCEBOOKS [nonfiction] for providing these ARCS in exchange for an honest review.

I wanted to love this book about a (serial?) killer in Massachusetts that I hadn't even heard of previously. Having lived in Boston and surrounding areas made it even more interesting to me. And it was a good book. However, I can't say I LOVED it.
PROS:
-The writer clearly did a LOT of research, He includes information from news of the day, from the killer himself, and from the famous writers who not only covered the case but also lived in the town during the time period.
-It is explained WHY I hadn't heard of it, being so quickly & suddenly overshadowed by the Manson family murders.
-A lot of the culture of the day, both of the young counterculture and the literary culture is introduced in a way that gave a really complete picture of this little piece of the world.
CONS:
-There are so many conversations and thoughts included that the writer clearly just made up. I might not have minded this so much if it had been addressed in a prologue or the first chapter or something. Instead it is (lightly) addressed in the afterword which I almost didn't listen to. He took a LOT of literary license with this. Which makes me wonder HOW MUCH of the rest of the book is factual, and how much is not.
-He was so keen to include the whole Mailer/Vonnegut saga that it made the beginning of the book VERY slow and often seemingly pointless.
-Way too many details that were unnecessary and seemed pointless. Especially considering that many of them were clearly at least partially fictional.
This was a good story, decent writing, but it would have benefited from some fairly intense editing. And the narration was too monotone for the first 3/4 of the book, plus I had to speed it up, but that's fairly common so...

I received this book in exchange for an honest review, which has not altered my opinion of this book. I would like to thank NetGalley and Sourcebooks for the ARC copy.

I love true crime stories. I have long been a listener of true crime podcasts, a watcher of documentaries, and a reader of books concerning murder and mayhem. I would say I've read a fair few in my life. I've also read many different types of true crime, but when as soon as we started with this one, I didn't feel drawn into the story. I found the narration to be a bit slopping and while the stories don't connect right away, and I understand that, they really felt like they had nothing to do with each other and would take way too long to connect on things that I had yet to care about.

Unfortunately, I've come to the conclusion that this would have been a good idea for two separate stories, one about Vonnegut and Mailer and the other about Costa, but since I have little knowledge of any of the three there wasn't anything holding me into the story.

I did dnf this at about 10% through the audiobook because I couldn't connect with it and found myself really not caring about what happened. Maybe this is a good story for someone who has the patience to start a brand new story with unlikable people all around, but it just wasn't my cup of tea.

I could not read the book as it dissapereed befor I even downloaded it. I was really looking forward to read it tough and will sure check the audiobook on obtener platforms

I hate to say it considering the severity of the context but I was bored. Maybe I will try reading the actual book and there will be a different outcome.

✨Book Review✨

Another eARC and ALC courtesy of @netgally and @sourcebooksfire and @recordedbooks and I’m so grateful! Also, the author narrates the audiobook, always a bonus!

Helltown is the story of Tony Costa, serial killer on Cape Cod in the 1960s. Costa’s murders were before Charles Manson even made it onto the scene and, honestly, were much more gruesome. The details involving the murders in this book are hard to read or listen to, but the story of how he was eventually caught is so satisfying. To see that monster make it behind bars is 👏🙌.

The way Casey Sherman writes this book is much like a historical fiction novel being written about a true historical figure. Sherman wanted to write this story in a conversational and novel way, so it’s not written like the typical true crime story. The events that occur in this book are still very real and very 😱🫣😣.

1.75

Reading this book was a rollercoaster. I was unsure of how I felt about it in the beginning, as the narrative jumps from Tony Costa, the killer, to authors Norman Mailer and Kurt Vonnegut. But once I started looking at the book more as an exploration of the time period rather than a pure true crime I started to get invested. And then the book kept going.

Ultimately, I think I understand what Sherman was trying to do, but the convoluted storytelling was unsuccessful in my mind and adding in all the extra details about the era and Mailer/Vonnegut just made the book feel too long and uneven.

I also wasn't the biggest fan of this particular style of narrative nonfiction. Towards the beginning of the book, specifically in the Vonnegut portions, it was hard to tell if Sherman's information came from actual sources about Vonnegut's life or if he just took the "autobiographical" parts from Slaughterhouse-Five. And throughout the book Sherman "recreates" full on conversations and internal dialogue that may or may not have actually happened and in one particular instance recreates a scene that in his author's note he says is a theory "as plausible as any" but with no indication in text of it being a theory. For me, the kind of nonfiction that toes the line into fiction doesn't work.

The author narrates the audiobook himself, and I thought he did a good job. I am sometimes hesitant when author's narrate their own books, but I thought Sherman's tone, inflection, and pace were great.

The narration is clear and easy to understand if a bit choppy and with some struggles on proper nouns. It seems there was not enough research to provide a factual story so the author took liberties to fill in dialogue and gratuitous violence that was not necessary to move the story forward. Such license made this too difficult to continue - true crime indeed has room for graphic descriptions if it is the known truth but not when the author imagines his own disturbances. DNF.

Hell Town Review!

I sincerely apologize, but I was not able to get through this one completely. It wasn’t exactly what I was expecting and the narrator was just so very monotone and dry. I’d love to give this another go with a physical copy since I’m such a huge fan of the 60s and serial killers. I was just not able to finish this one!

This book is all over the place. It starts by leading into some back ground but then intersperses a story about Vonnegut. I was unfamiliar with the serial murders that took place in Provincetown (Helltown), Mass committed by Tony Costa in 1969. While this book is listed as True Crime that’s not entirely the case. It’s true crime containing a great deal of narrative fiction. The murders and the trial actually happened but much of the rest of it rings false. The dialogue is trite and a lot of the interactions, personal thoughts etc. are fabricated. This is full of stuffing. The filler includes Kurt Vonnegut, Norman Mailer, Chappaquiddick, Apollo 11, the Charles Manson murders, as well as speculation regarding the perpetrator of an unsolved murder. If you think this sounds convoluted, you would be correct. I also found entire chapters on Kurt Vonnegut and Normal Mailer unnecessary and just made the book that much more frustrating. Half of this book is fictional and it shouldn't be especially since it is labeled as NON FICTION. I was not impressed and disappointed in this book.

This is the story of serial killer Tony Costa on Cape Cod in 1969 (a very historical year). I found the parts of this book that focused on Costa and his victims, trial, and life in prison very enlightening. I heard a lot I didn’t know since Costa was relatively unknown to me.
However, I felt like this book was too long (would have been better if about 50-100 pages were cut) and it would have been better if it had one focus. I felt almost like I couldn’t keep things straight since we jumped around to so many other events and people through the book (Norman Mailer, Kurt Vonnegut, Manson, Chappaquiddick, and the moon landing to name a few). I understand why most of those were mentioned but I didn’t need so much history when I was enthralled with the original story itself. It just felt like the story lost its way a few too many times.
This was an audiobook for me and I felt like the author did a good job narrating. However, at times it did seem a little monotone and boring.
Thank you to NetGalley and RB Media for the audio arc of this book in exchange for my honest review.