Darker than Night: The True Story of a Brutal Double Homicide and an 18-Year Long Quest for Justice (St. Martin's True Crime Library)

About 6-7 years ago friends of ours invited us on their annual January getaway to the Mid Michigan area. As people have said, this is some out of the way area where you can really go to get lost. All empty country with intermittent towns and old bars full of local. In doing my online research to see what bars we may be hitting in the various towns, I came across Linkers Lost Creek Tavern and something came up about Linkers Lost Creek murders. Just that was creepy enough to draw me in. My search brought me to this book and I ordered it, received it and was able to read it by the time we left. Brought it along and gave it to my friend and he read enough the first morning for us to share the details with the girls and make for kind of an eerie weekend in the mitten. All the locals in the bars instantly seemed like they could be related to the Duvalls. Lol. My friend was familiar with the places in the book as he had owned a cabin there back in the 80's but was probably gone from the area when the murders took place. Lots of local cities are mentioned as this family spanned from south east Michigan up to the Mio/Lewiston area. They even divulged about the murders in a Wixom bar near me that I go to on occasion. We visited Walker's Tavern which was a bar that they were last seen at and probably hasn't changed on bit decor- wise and also got to talk to the 80+ year old owner who was working that night and talked to the victims and was involved in the case and mentioned in the book. Paul Pasternak, he just recently sold the bar but at least we got to talk to him a few times the last couple years on our annual visits and had him sign our copy of the book. Very creepy to visit the different bars that they were last seen in on their last few days and imagine them there before they ran into those monsters.Detective Lesnicki and attorney Pendergast did amazing work to bring their families some justice. Also, the lady who finally talked and told them what she saw needs to get credit. She finally was convinced to tell her story even while under threat of death from the brothers who basically ran that area through terror.If you are ever heading to that area of Michigan, this book is a must read. It will make your trip so much more interesting and add a dark level of intrigue.This should be a movie.

I really enjoyed this book. Such a sad story but was hard to put down once I started.

This really is a great read, I just wish there wasn’t so much repeating of information given in the investigation. I’ll point out that I’m not a patient person :). Honestly, I had a hard time putting the book down, but I also skimmed some pages due to the repeated comments. The crime in this book was horrific, and I’m so very sorry for the families of the victims.

For full disclosure, I will admit that I have not finished "Darker than Night" (DTN). I'm one-third of the way in, and for now I'm just giving up; it's just not what I'm looking for in a true-crime book. I will say that this is my second read from Tom Henderson -- I last read "Blood Justice," and except for a few minor complaints (I wrote a review), I really liked it -- and so I expected a little bit more here. I do believe that this story could've been told in a different way, perhaps should've been told in a different way. But I'm not exactly sure how.OK. I do have a few ideas. Or rather "stole" an idea or two, from books and authors I've read before.I started thinking about the book "I: The Creation of a Serial Killer" by Jack Olsen. Most of the book is written as a first-person narrative from the so-called Happy Face Killer -- Keith Hunter Jesperson -- and it is chilling. I do believe that Mr. Olsen interviewed Mr. Jesperson extensively in prison, however, and so therefore, the author probably gained a lot of background information as well as legal rights, in the telling of that story.Mr. Henderson could've gone in this same direction, to write this from the perspective of the killers: the Duvall brothers. It would have been a high-risk-high-reward decision, though, as I understand that many readers would have been turned off since the killers were far from sympathetic. But television shows such as "Evil, I" have used this technique, and I believe it really works. So another possibility would have been: write from the perspective of the hunters that were killed. Sure, the hunters actions and thoughts are mostly speculation, but most of it could've been pieced together through interviews and the police "Murder Book." Television shows such as "Stolen Voices, Buried Secrets" have used this technique, to varying success.But this book just never seems to come alive, because chapter after chapter, it really just lists red herring after red herring, false lead after false lead, with just a tiny bit of truth thrown in here or there. The detectives really were just sent out on a wild goose chase by those that they interviewed, and sure, this happened in the real case and it is listed seemingly ad nauseum here. But for me, this made DTN monotonous, and I just lost interest.There is one big issue with the true story itself in which Mr. Henderson had zero control: the hunters went missing, no one minus the killers knew what really happened, and it was many years before the crime was finally solved. So this does potentially create a large hole in the written story, although of course detectives were digging for details during that time, and family members were still searching for the dark truth. But if the story were written from the criminals' or victims' perspectives, these holes could've been "filled in." I will say that I did know quite a bit about this story before reading; I've watched at least a couple of documentaries on it, the most recent being an episode of "Murder Book," entitled "Into the Woods," that's really good. That episode actually prompted me to buy this book in the first place.Well, once again, I may be off base with this review -- and I haven't finished it -- so I'm giving it a three to be fair. I may come back and finish it sometime in the future, but right now, I doubt it.

Interesting

If u are into true crime like i am u will enjoy this very sad story of 2 young girls,whose lives were so cruelly taken but at different time.Very sad

Excellent read. Hats off to Bronco. Great police work.

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