Bringing Adam Home: The Abduction That Changed America

After reading the account of the famous stranger abduction and murder of 6-year-old Adam Walsh told from his father's perspective in John Walsh's TEARS OF RAGE, I felt compelled to read Les Standiford's BRINGING ADAM HOME which provides a wider-lens POV of the same tragic crime. This book works the same case with a special emphasis and perspective of Joe Matthews, former homicide detective who was both familiar with the case and, later, an indispensable family friend of the Walshes who is asked to review the entire case file and suss out just whodunit once and for all. While both books cover the same ground, there is a greater organization to how the tale is told in Standiford's book. It also benefits from additional time, since this book is published later and provides a greater sense of getting answers that were not yet available to John Walsh at the time of the writing of TEARS OF RAGE.

While the opening chapters were somewhat slow and repetitive to me, I acknowledge that this is probably because I read it immediately after finishing TEARS OF RAGE and was familiar with a lot of what was being covered. However, having the story later reviewed and pored over from the eyes of a detective, an outsider concerned mainly with obtaining justice for the family brought a clearer sense of order to what chaos described in Walsh's book. It also provided a viewpoint from which to understand and digest the criticism of the Hollywood Police Department's handling of the case, which I could give greater credence to because it's coming from another cop and not an civilian.

In any case, this account has a lot of moments I found interesting as it included some excerpts of interviews done with the primary suspect, Ottis Toole, as well as a meticulous account of the errors committed during the investigation. By the book's end, one is impressed with the work of Joe Matthews and dismayed by the fact that this murder could have been solved and put to rest years earlier--but most of all--I close this book with some sense of relief that the Walsh family now has the knowledge and surety that eluded them for so long, and in a way, justice for Adam.