Helltown

May 2, 2022
Made-up scenes do little to enhance this workmanlike account of the case of Tony Costa, a murderer who targeted women on Cape Cod in the late 1960s, from bestseller Sherman (Hunting Whitey: The Inside Story of the Capture and Killing of America’s Most Wanted Crime Boss). Costa, a 20-something carpenter who may have killed as many as eight women around Truro, Mass., became a suspect following the disappearances of Patricia Walsh and Mary Anne Wysocki. He was seen in public with both women, and he told implausible stories about how he came to own Walsh’s Volkswagen. Dogged police investigation eventually led to the discovery of Walsh and Wysocki’s dismembered remains in the woods, along with those of other women who’d gone missing, though Costa was convicted of only the two murders. Sherman presents numerous scenes of Costa conversing with an alternate personality called Cory, who Costa claimed was responsible for all the bloodshed, and relates Costa’s final thoughts before hanging himself in his prison cell. (In an author’s note, Sherman describes the book as “a work of fact told with elements of fiction storytelling.”) Endemic speculative sections such as these make this a miss for those who prefer their true crime to stick to the facts. Agent: Peter Steinberg, Fletcher & Co.

April 2, 2022

Sherman (coauthor, Boston Strong: A City's Triumph over Tragedy) delivers a confusing, fictionalized portrayal of the crimes committed by killer Tony Costa, interspersed with the story of a rivalry between Kurt Vonnegut and Norman Mailer, both of whom were set on immortalizing Costa's story in print. Costa is believed to have killed eight young women on Cape Cod in 1968, though he was convicted of only two of the murders. While in prison, he wrote his own account of several of the murders in an unpublished manuscript he called "Resurrection," which Sherman relied on to write his book. "Resurrection" included interviews with others involved, though the dialogue in Sherman's work is uncited and apparently invented, making it very much not a work of nonfiction, despite the author's claims. Sherman explores how Costa tried to explain away his apparent guilt--in his prison manuscript he blamed the murders on one of his split personalities, an alter ego he calls Cory Devereaux--and details his arrest and trial. VERDICT The book is hard to follow and full of references to drugs and 1960s counterculture that will confuse many readers. Moreover, the lengthy treatment of the Vonnegut-Mailer dispute doesn't fit with the rest of the book. Not recommended for true crime readers.--Amelia Osterud

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Starred review from May 1, 2022
Cape Cod is a place of mutable beauty with a stormy history anchored to a rough and rowdy settlement known as Helltown, undergirding Provincetown. Journalist and best-selling author Sherman grew up on Cape Cod, and now exhumes the full, horrifying story of serial killer Tony Costa's grotesque 1969 rampage. A charismatic drug dealer and user, Costa attracted young disciples and easily reeled in the gentle women he murdered. Sherman portrays Costa with ferocious intimacy, tracking his every move and channeling the inner voice that propelled his macabre acts. Sherman also illuminates the minds and lives of two Cape Cod writers and fathers--one flamboyantly pugnacious and famous, the other brooding and still -struggling--who were galvanized by the killings, mixing avidly researched facts with what he calls "elements of fictional storytelling" to portray Norman Mailer and Kurt Vonnegut to vivid if sometimes dubious effect. On firmer ground, Sherman incisively aligns the shocking Cape Cod killings with the even more diabolical violence of Charles Manson and his followers, the Vietnam War and antiwar protests, the Apollo 11 mission, and the tragic scandal of Chappaquiddick. Readers will not soon forget Sherman's gripping and elucidating web of true crime and literary history tracing the personal, communal, political, and artistic repercussions of gruesome killings during a time of indelible ferment.

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