Sebastian Junger at Brookline Booksmith

Sebastian Junger will read from A Death in Belmont tomorrow, Saturday, April 7, at the Brookline Booksmith at 2:00 pm.

The book has been out for a while, but the Boston Strangler is one of the nation's most infamous killers. Junger's own take on it is especially riveting since his own family had a close brush with the Strangler himself. Albert DeSalvo helped build an addition onto the Junger's home in Belmont, and he later confessed to 13 murders.

But DeSalvo was never confessed to the 1963 murder of Bessie Goldberg, the actual death in Belmont that left such an imprint on Junger's family. Although it looked as if the work was done by the Boston Strangler, a black man named Roy Smith was convicted of the crime. Smith seems to have been in the wrong place at the wrong time, but Junger never found information that exonerated him.

As a result, Junger turns the story over to the reader. Junger has said that the book lets the readers act as the jury: "What saved me was this idea that I was going to turn the readers into a jury. If you don't know, you just turn to the readers and ask a question and let them decide."

Image of A Death in Belmont from Powells. Here's an excerpt from the book.