A Murder on the Hill

Title: A Murder on the Hill: The Secret Life and Mysterious Death of Ruth Munson
Author: Roger Barr
Publisher: Minnesota Historical Society Press
Release Date: April 2, 2024
Page Count: 320
Rating: 3.5 stars out of 5

Read book blurb here

In December of 1937, the body of Ruth Munson was discovered in the derelict Aberdeen Hotel, a once-grand luxury apartment hotel, felled by the stock market crash and the Depression. This was the St. Paul of John Dillinger and Babyface Nelson, where bootlegging and prostitution flourished, and in 1935 the City finally started cracking down on rampant police corruption within the St. Paul Police Department. 

There was every reason to hope that the murderer would be brought to justice, yet the Munson murder remains unsolved. I found the book very frustrating in that the police hopped from one theory of the case to another without uncovering much of anything. It was a boyfriend or former lover, it was someone who left three small metal shear pins at the site, it was the black porter at the Union Depot, it was someone from Munson's "secret life" involved two mysterious women who were often seen at local bars with Ruth, it was a vagrant, maybe Ruth was involved in selling drugs, etc. And once the police determined that Ruth's death may have come "at the hands of someone from the black community," that racism probably prevented the case from being solved. 

The author carefully details countess reports and unfortunately, the sheer abundance of similar reports is overwhelming. I'm not sure that every detail is necessary and perhaps a concise summary would have been more compelling than an exhaustive point-by-point accounting. There is a very brief chapter at about 80% of the book called "Missed Opportunities" which very briefly summarizing possible legitimate suspects, but at this point it is a little bit too later. 

The exhaustive research is impressive but perhaps more interpretation and less listing of details would have resulted in a more cohesive gripping story. 3.5 stars. 

I received an ARC from the publisher, via Edelweiss, in exchange for an honest review.