4 stars!

This is the first review of “Murder in Wauwatosa” that someone posted on the Amazon.com website.

4.0 out of 5 stars 
A summer day, a swimming hole – but no Norman Rockwell painting… July 22, 2012
By Timothy P. Williams

Growing up in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin (a Milwaukee suburb,) author Paul Hoffman heard about the 1925 death of Buddy Schumacher from an elderly neighbor who had known the boy. In fact, Hoffman’s parents had bought the family home from Schumacher’s parents.

It’s no wonder, then, that as an adult he would bring his professional journalist’s eye to the decades-old unsolved case of the boy who was abducted and murdered on a trip to the local swimming hole. Speaking with family members and digging through records both dusty and digital, Hoffman weaves together the sensationalist headlines of the day, all the gritty details, and a broader historical perspective to assemble a more complete accounting of the facts than was known by most of the contemporaries.

You won’t learn “whodunnit” in these pages, but you’ll wish Hoffman had been there to interview the players at the time – or at least to review the evidence before many of the records were destroyed.

It is both an absorbing tale of a human tragedy, and a microcosmic history of a region and period. It’s a quick read, and hard to put down – I highly recommend it.