Book Review: Long Haul

 

From the FBI’s former assistant director, a shocking journey to the dark side of America’s highways, revealing the FBI Highway Serial Killings Initiative’s hunt for the long-haul truckers behind an astonishing 850 murders–and counting.

In 2004, the FBI was tipped off to a gruesome pattern of unsolved murders along American roadways. Today at least 850 homicides have been linked to a solitary breed of predators: long-haul truck drivers. They have been given names like the “Truck Stop Killer,” who rigged a traveling torture chamber in the rear of his truck and is suspected to have killed fifty women, and “The Interstate Strangler,” who once answered a phone call from his mother while killing one of his dozen victims. The crisis was such that the FBI opened a special unit, the Highway Serial Killings Initiative. In many cases, the victims—often at-risk women—are picked up at truck stops in one jurisdiction, sexually assaulted and murdered in another, and dumped along a highway in a third place. The transient nature of the offenders and multiple jurisdictions involved make these cases incredibly difficult to solve.

Based on his own on-the-ground research and drawing on his twenty-five-year career as an FBI special agent, Frank Figliuzzi investigates the most terrifying cases. He also rides in a big-rig with a long-haul trucker for thousands of miles, gaining an intimate understanding of the life and habits of drivers and their roadside culture. And he interviews the courageous trafficked victims of these crimes, and their inspiring efforts to now help others avoid similar fates.

Long Haul is a gripping exploration of a violent, disordered world hiding in plain sight, and the heroes racing to end the horror. It will forever unsettle how you travel on the road.

My Review

I like true crime stories. That is what drew me to this book. Stop. I will warn you that if you are looking to read this book so that you can read a lot of stories about the numerous murd@rs that truck drivers have committed, you will be disappointed. This book does feature a few of the famous stories but the stories are short only lasting a few pages. 

This book is more of an investigative piece. While, I would have liked to have read a bit more about some of the true crime stories, I also did appreciate hearing from some of the victims, the organizations that help to stop human trafficking, and Mike. Mike is a long-haul truck driver and who Frank rode with for a week to see what life on the road is like for truck drivers. 

As my husband is a truck driver but works in the logging industry driving truck in the mountains, I appreciated the commitment more that truck drivers do. I did laugh when I Mike spoke about learning to drive in Colorado during winter. I live in Colorado and driving the wintery roads in the mountains is the norm for him.