Review of Murder in the Neighborhood: The True Story of America's First Recorded Mass Shooting by Ellen J. Green

It's a topic too often on the main headlines of the news outlets these days. More and more mass shootings. We struggle to think of a time when these were not happening. Well, the first one was over 60 years ago. And this is that story. Find out more about Murder in the Neighborhood: The True Story of America's First Recorded Mass shooting and read my review of this engaging, tragic story.

Murder in the Neighborhood—the story of the first mass shooting in the US

Ellen J. Green

Genre: True Crime

Publisher: Thread Books, Hachette UK

Date of Publication: 4/28/2022

ISBN13: 9781909770706

Number of pages: 324

Word Count: 85k

Cover Artist: Thread books

Book Description: 

On 6 September 1949, twenty-eight-year-old Howard Barton Unruh shot thirteen people in less than twelve minutes on his block in East Camden, New Jersey. The shocking true story of the first recorded mass shooting in America has never been told, until now.

The sky was cloudless that morning when twelve-year-old Raymond Havens left his home on River Road. His grandmother had sent him to get a haircut at the barbershop across the street—where he was about to witness his neighbor and friend Howard open fire on the customers inside.

Told through the eyes of young Raymond, who had visited Howard regularly to listen to his war stories, and the mother trying to piece together the disturbing inner workings of her son’s mind, Murder in the Neighborhood uncovers the chilling true story of Howard Unruh, the quiet loner who meticulously plotted his revenge on the neighbors who shunned him and became one of America’s first mass killers.

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Excerpt:

That September morning started much like any other. Camden, New Jersey, the sparkling little sister of Philadelphia, connected by the high arches of the Delaware River Bridge, was waking up to heat nearing the mid-seventies—by nine o’clock the humidity was sitting high above the city, waiting to descend.

Cramer Hill, a small section of Camden, bound by the Delaware River to the west, the Pavonia Train Yard to the east, State Street to the south and 36th Street to the north—a grid of streets twenty-four blocks long, and about five or six blocks wide contained within—was about to draw the focus of the world but nobody knew it, not that morning at nine o’clock.

River Road cut a swath through Cramer Hill where open-bay trucks rumbled through all day long, overloaded with tomatoes headed for the Campbell’s soup factory a few miles away. The clearly visible cargo was only held in place by wire mesh caging along the sides. The loud engine sounds called to children to get out of the street, to stand and watch, waiting for a tomato to break loose and fall into their small hands. They were often rewarded when a bump in the road threw a few of the greenish-red fruits into the street.

The smells of the river wafting in, the sounds of the boats, the hint of tomatoes cooking at Campbell’s, the smoke from the stacks of Eavenson and Sons soap factory a mile away—it was all there. But mostly it was the shoemaker’s pungent aroma of tannery oils, the lingering, savory fragrance from Latela’s Italian luncheonette on the corner, the endless din of Engel’s bar across the street, and the music that poured out of its doors after the sun went down that filled every home.

Five businesses shared one side of the small block—a cacophonic mix of a pharmacy, a barbershop, a cobbler, a tailor and a café. The other side only had two: a grocery and a bar. Most of the owners lived there, nestled in their small apartments above their establishments. They all knew each other well enough on that small stretch of River Road. Enough to pull a chair out onto the sidewalk on summer nights for a chat. Enough to get a drink at Engel’s now and again. Enough to keep an eye on things and on each other. But not one of them saw it coming. Not the Pilarchiks, the Hoovers, the Hamiltons, the Zegrinos or the Cohens. They’d safely shared that space together for years, but not one of them was spared. 

**My thoughts**

Like many others, I am fascinated by true crime stories, because I have a need to try to make some sense out of the chaos. This one is even more intriguing as the story of the first recorded mass shooting in the US. So when the opportunity to read it presented itself, I jumped on it.

And then Buffalo and Uvalde happened. I had to set it aside for a while. I live in Western NY and taught for 20 years. Just too close to home.

Six weeks later, I pulled it ot again, hoping for a decent read. A lot of times these kinds of books end up reading more like detached reports and I find myself wanting to watch a documentary instead.

Not this one.

I haven't been this engrossed in a true crime story since I read Truman Capote's In True Blood all those years ago.

You can tell the author did exhaustive and extensive research for this book. Detailed descriptions and accounts really place you at the scenes. Plus the story is told from the points of view of people directly involved. Most striking and prominent is Raymond, told in first person, who had been a boy in the neighborhood, present at the start of the shooting and know Howard personally. I had chills as he recounts Howard making direct eye contact with him, and yet not killing him, in spite of going after so many others.

Another regular narrator is a third-person account from Howard's mother, Freda. You can really feel her struggle as the mother of the man who gunned down 5 men, 5 women, and 3 children. The agony of trying to figure out how you could have missed the signs and maybe prevented the tragedy from occurring. The horror of learning more and more details and secrets about the son you were closer to than anyone else in the world. The constant ridicule by friends and even family in the aftermath.

You're reading actual history, but it reads more like a novel. I love that because it is engaging and easy to read. I just hope that people don't forget that it's NOT fiction.

And while this story was from 60 years ago and a lot has changed, so much is still the same and relevant to what's happening today. We can learn from reading this.

Well done.

I received a requested review copy from the author. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

 

About the Author:

Ellen J. Green is the Amazon Charts bestselling author of the Ava Saunders novels (Absolution and Twist of Faith) and The Book of James. She attended Temple University in Philadelphia, where she earned her degrees in psychology, and has worked in the psychiatric ward of a maximum-security correctional facility for fifteen years. She also holds an MFA degree in creative writing from Fairleigh Dickinson University. Born and raised in Upstate New York, Ms. Green now lives in southern New Jersey with her two children.

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