The Want-Ad Killer (True Crime)

Catching a serial killer takes a great commitment by a lot of people. Here is the account of the crimes Harvey Louis Carignan committed and the heroic effort to bring him to justice. The details of his crimes, and of his defense, are gruesome and horrifying. Thankfully some of his victims lived to tell the tale and told it in open court, helping to lock Carignan up. A good portion of the first part of this book is centered on one particular victim, and that's where the title came from. I didn't find any evidence through the book to peg the title as the killer's M.O., though, so either that was discarded as unimportant to the story or was a detail that changed during his years of active killing. Rule spreads information about the killer's background and upbringing throughout the book, which is well-researched and a thorough portrait of a killer and his crimes. She also shows a great deal of sympathy towards his victims and dedicates time to respectfully sharing their stories. It's a well-balanced true crime book and details a reign of terror in the region that was thankfully ended.

I had a hard time putting this one down it was such a good read!

This is one of Rule's best works. I have read numerous true crime books over the years and this, by far, is one of my favorites. It amazes me how such a diabolical mind was able to stay free after so many years and so many murders. I also know someone who works for the MN Dept of Corrections who speaks with Harvey on a regular basis. This cold blooded killer is alive and enjoying his regular meals and cable tv. He receives chemotherapy compliments of the taxpayers. Alaska would have saved so many so much if it had taken care of this man after his first murder.

My first adventure into reading true crime, certainly not my last. It seemed as though Ann must have been an eyewitness to Harvey Carnigan's life of crime. It was very well told, easy to follow, difficult to put down. Eight more Ann Rule books sitting on the shelf for me to read - and more to come.

Harvey Carignan, the sexual psycho killer in Ann Rule's The Want-Ad Killer, is so beyond the description of horrible. He was a manipulator of girls, women, the law, and in an odd way, himself.Using a hammer to 'finish' off his victims after he sodomized them in the most demeaning, dehumanizing possible ways that one can fathom, he left his victims in isolated places -- proclaiming that he was the victim, that people were out to get him as they had always been in his life. This book sickened and saddened me, as the killer himself was a victim, a victim of being unwanted by his mother and himself a likely victim of sexual abuse. Harvey Carignan was a sly and intelligent man, who, like the innocent victims he took off the earth, could have made wonderful, positive contributions to the society at large if only his life was filled with the love and understanding that his victims received while limited with the life given to them. Ann Rule is an articulate interperter when it comes to the mind of the hunter and the hunted. She knows her territory and is very good, I feel, at informing her readers of the kinds of sick people out there. I read Lust Killer, too, which I think is equally tragic in characters and circumstances. I am now reading The I-5 Killer. Her books are filled with psychology, law and the seamy underworld of the criminal. I recommend all her books. Thanks, Ann!