The back cover of this book made it seem like one of those trashy, tabloidesque true crime books I don't care for, and I hesitated to read it. I'm glad I did anyway, because Sole Survivor turned out to be much more serious and sober in tone than I expected. The author presents a series of case studies, mainly from the 1970s, of children who murdered their whole families (or almost their whole families; sometimes there were survivors). Besides covering the homicides themselves and their immediate aftermath, he delves into a social history of each family. His argument is that these familiacides (his term) occur because the family, often struggling to rise in socioeconomic status, puts unbearable pressure on the child until his/her entire identity is lost, and by killing the family the child is simply trying to assert themselves as an individual.

I'm still not sure what I think of Leyton's theory, but I found this book to be quite interesting and thought-provoking. My copy is from 1992; I wonder if later editions include more recent examples.

(Oh, I should note here that the title means "children" in the sense of "offspring." Only one of the murderers in this book was actually a minor child at the time of the killing; all the others were young adults.) ( )