NPR, One of the Best Books of the Year
A "chilling but fascinating portrait" of a serial killer, and "a
must-read for true crime fans" who enjoyed My Dark Places**,**
The Stranger Beside Me**, or** I'll Be Gone In the Dark
(Buzzfeed)
One of Argentina's most innovative writers brings to life the story of
a teenager who murdered 4 taxi drivers in 1982 Buenos Aires--without any
apparent motive.
Over the course of one ghastly week in September 1982, the bodies of 4
taxi drivers were found in Buenos Aires, each murder carried out with
the same cold precision. The assailant: a 19-year-old boy, odd and
taciturn, who gave the impression of being completely sane. But the
crimes themselves were not: 4 murders, as exact as they were senseless.
More than 30 years later, Argentine author Carlos Busqued began visiting
Ricardo Melogno, the serial killer, in prison. Their conversations
return to the nebulous era of the crimes and a story full of missing
pieces. The result is a book at once hypnotic and unnerving, constructed
from forensic documents, newspaper clippings, and interviews with
Melogno himself. Without imposing judgment, Busqued allows for the
killer to describe his way of retreating from the world and to explain
his crimes as best he can. In his own words, Melogno recalls a visit
from Pope Francis, grim depictions of daily life in prison, and
childhood remembrances of an unloving mother who drove her son to Brazil
to study witchcraft. As these conversations progress, the focus slowly
shifts from the crimes themselves, to Melogno's mistreatment and
misdiagnosis while in prison, to his current fate: incarcerated in
perpetuity despite having served his full sentence.
Using these personal interviews, alongside forensic documents and
newspaper clippings, Busqued crafted Magnetized, a captivating story
about one man's crimes, and a meditation on how one chooses to inhabit
the world, or to become absent from it.
