A Disturbing Nature by Brian LeBeau

A Disturbing Nature by Brian LeBeau is a historical fiction about two serial killers in the 1970s, especially about The FBI agent, legendary Chief Investigator Francis Palmer, as well as Ted Bundy in California and Utah, and Maurice “Mo” Lumen in Virginia and Massachusetts. When Palmer was on the hunt, he essentially tried to live in the mind of the killers, and while effective, it was particularly damaging to Palmer’s life. In pursuit, Palmer was dedicated to his task to the exclusion of all else. It cost him his marriage and the relationships with his daughters, and he was smoking cigarettes and drinking to great excess, all as an ill-chosen means of managing his stress. 

 

As Palmer was pursuing Bundy, he had figured out that the killer had to be Bundy who was doing the serial killings, but Bundy was so smart that he was able to outfox the FBI and to cover his tracks for an extended period of time. Bundy knew Palmer was on his trail, but he was cocky about his ability to carry on with the killings. He had become a law student near the end of his murders, allegedly learning enough about the law to keep his arrest from occurring. It was horrible for Palmer when he was about to draw the net closed on Bundy that the FBI pulled him back to Massachusetts to pursue another serial killer. Palmer did all that he could to get the Bureau to change its mind, but he could not beat the politics of the FBI at that time. The author seemed to use known details about Bundy to help legitimize Palmer and the complications of catching a new serial killer. LeBeau was quite successful in doing so.

 

Mo was nearly 25 as his part of the story began. The back story filled in details, that Mo had a horrible childhood which included his mother’s early death and then placement in the foster system when his father, a severe alcoholic, could not take care of him and his brother. Years before her death, the patient’s mother had an affair with a black man which produced Mo’s brother, and the author used that idea to talk about the racism that infiltrated the social structure and social agencies in both Virginia and Massachusetts at the time. It was as a young boy that Mo suffered a prolonged seizure which left him brain damaged. As the result of the seizure his emotional development was arrested at about the age of 11, and he seemed to be 0doomed to becoming a laborer for his life. In his foster family, Mo was also the victim mistreatment by the favored daughter Emily who falsely accused him of various misdeeds. The foster family was willing to adopt his little brother, but Mo was cast out, and he became a groundskeeper at a small college in Massachusetts where he continued to have relationship problems with small minded people. Mo did grow up loving baseball, and upon moving to Massachusetts, he quickly became a great fan of the Boston Red Sox. The story of his love of the game and the remarkable 1975 baseball playoffs and World Series was woven very successfully into the story.

 

The only part of the story that made me feel critical was when Palmer talked to a psychologist who did an evaluation of Mo. The use of diagnostic terminology was loose and questionable, but that information fit nicely into the story. LeBeau did a marvelous job developing complimentary characters, both good guys and bad ones, with whom Mo became involved. The complications of trying to pin down the serial killer and the deaths of 12 young women was masterfully told. There were developments at the end of the story that I did not foresee, and the book was enjoyable right to the very end. I will be more than happy to read more books by LeBeau.