Cheap Three Weeks in October: The Manhunt for the Serial Sniper (Book) (Charles A. Moose, Charles Fleming) Price

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Customer Reviews of Three Weeks in October: The Manhunt for the Serial Sniper

50% Great
I live in the DC area and anxiously waited to get my hands on the book by who I feel is certainly a hero. Chief Moose stepped up and ran a first class operation, combining the services of dozens of agencies, thousands of officers, and tens of thousands of pieces information....and it worked, the snipers were caught and are now on trial. Like the Chief, I wish it had been solved sooner, but how many major crimes go for months without being solved, how many murders still appear years later in "cold case" files and on TV documentaries. I spent 20 years in law enforcement and am absolutely convinced the team he led did an outstanding job.

Now, the book. I felt the coverage of the sniper investigation was good, but the bouncing back and forth between the time the task force was looking to solve the crime and the years Chief Moose spent growing up, then as a young officer in Portland, and on and on, was extremely distracting. I started scanning those chapters to get back to the sniper coverage. A chapter, maybe 2 to include Portland would have been fine, but this book is almost 50% biography. The constant references to the black-white struggles were also not necessary in this book.

I love you Chief, but I really think you need to put the badge back on. Those who CAN. serve as cops; those who CAN'T, write about it.....let those who can't take care of the writing, someone needs you as their Chief.....

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a difficult book
For 3 weeks in October of 2002 two men terrorized an entire region. I remember malls being half empty, silent playgrounds and seeing people weaving and bobbing at the gas pump. It was a terrible time. Former Chief Charles Moose has written a book abou those days and it's infuriated a lot of people. For my part, I don't see why he couldn't write a book. A lot of people have made money from this case including reporters from USA Today. Also, according to Moose reporters from the Washington Post contacted him about joining with them to write a book of their own.

As for the book itself, it's a difficult read. Moose is not an easy man or an especially likeable one. His treatment of his first wife and his admited hot temper didn't endear him to me at all but the story of how a kid from North Carolina ended up as the Chief of Montgomery County (one of the richest, proudest and self satisfied places in Metropolitan DC) is interesting.

The sad story of his parents deaths, and his early days in Portland, Oregon (I'm certainly crossing Portland off my list of places to visit!)are compelling. The book does a good job at showing how dull the day to day details of semi small town police work are. It's nothing like a TV show or movie. Moose is pretty honest about his shortcomings. He tells how he managed to deeply offend his officers by showing up at an academy graduation without his dress uniform and he tells the story of how he got the job of Chief of Portland.

Now about the investigation. Frankly, despite what Moose says, his team didn't catch the snipers. The big break came because a trucker spotted the killers in their car and called the hotline. The trucker never would've noticed if a description of the car hadn't been released by the media. Perhaps this was too big for a small town man, perhaps the ATF and FBI should've taken over instead of providing assistance. We'll never know for sure. The man in this book is complicated and angry. The book is worth reading because of this perhaps unintended portrait.

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It was a good read
I bought the book after a friend told me about it. I knew the whole book would be written in Moose's perspective. I actually liked the bio chapters because they really let me see what Moose was all about. I also liked that Moose wasn't afraid to put down alot of his real thoughts on paper.