List of 10 is an account of serial killer Joseph Naso who was eventually convicted of 4 murders, though 6 were conclusively tied to him. The identity of the other 4 women on his list has never been determined.
The book covers Naso's killings mostly chronologically. The 4th victim is discussed in detail after the 5th and 6th, mostly because she doesn't fit the pattern - she was the only one not known to work as a prostitute.
I found parts of the book aggravating due to the author's constant reassurances that he will revisit portions of the story after giving a brief introduction to them, then going off on another tangent. I also found the extensive discussion of the crime scenes to be tedious and repetitive. This is one true crime book that made me wish Ann Rule was still alive and writing.

This is an in-depth look at a serial killer who is not as infamous as many others. It is very gripping and enthralling. A good read for all true crime and serial killer enthusiasts.

I loved this book. It is about sexual serial killer Joseph Naso and the women he brutally killed. The authors really focused on the victims, breathing life into them and making sure they are not forgotten in all of this. This book does not idolize Naso, either. It makes him out for what he is, a sociopathic and narcissistic predator. The book was very well researched and to my knowledge, the only one on Joseph Naso. Great book! I highly recommend it.

I would love to review the book, but unfortunately, the book ends mid way through the story. I suppose it is a formatting issue but now I am left hanging with no idea how the book ends!

I have failed to complete this book yet because I am finding it quite dry. I expect facts yes but I also expected to be told in an entertaining flowing story. Reading this I feel like a cop is briefing me on the case just to get the information across. At this time I'm not sure I will finish it. I may come back to it later.

List of 10 is narrative nonfiction about Joseph Naso, a deranged serial killer with narcisstic tendencies. Joseph Naso was married once and even had two sons (one of which suffered from schizophrenia, and who Naso apparently took good care of), worked as a freelance photographer and in his spare time… he killed prostitutes. Well, mostly prostitutes. He had a pretty normal childhood, nothing that would indicate he was capable of doing this, and his wife of several years never suspected anything. Yet, DNA doesn’t lie, and he now awaits the death sentence in death row.

The book is narrative nonfiction, and while I’m sometimes a fan of that (rather than in just general nonfiction, in narrative nonfiction the author sometimes crawls in the mind of the people who play a role in the book, imagining what they must’ve been thinking at the moment) it doesn’t work quite as well here. I found that the author often jumped to conclusions and even made contradictory remarks while pretending to be in the mind of the victims or the perpetrator himself, Joseph Naso. This threw me off a little and made me not enjoy the book as much. The thoughts of the victims didn’t always seem plausible either, and sometimes took wild turns with a victim thinking something one moment then something else the next. It also comes across to me as slightly disrespectful to assume to know what they were thinking. Do that for the murderer, sure, I have no respect for murderers anyway. But the victims deserve more.

The author is also condescending at times, both toward the readers and the victims. For example, he likes to mention often how a victim couldn’t have known the man they were talking to was a serial murderer. Duh. It’s not like he had the words written on his forehead. I don’t think any reader anywhere would assume the victim could just guess this.

I also felt evidence was lacking. Sure, we get a run down of what happened to the victims, how they first met Naso, how he killed them and what is then from the police investigation. We get a little background info on both the victims and Naso, and in the end, we do get a look into the trial and the supposed “list of 10” the book is based upon, of which six have been identified as people murdered by Naso (four he was convicted of, two they didn’t have sufficient evidence of).

For a short case book on the murderer that’s not too bad, but it still feels lacking. You can easily decipher this from police reports and the trial. I wanted to see additional research: the author talking to the victim’s families, talking to Naso’s family members, or at least trying to if they didn’t want to. Talking to officers who worked on the case, the D.A., and so on. And then, I also wanted to know more about the list of 10. I was hoping the author would at least have suggestions as to who the remaining four victims were, and a lead on at least one of them.

What also bothered me is that for about a decade, if the years are correct, Naso lived in Sacramento and supposedly didn’t kill anyone. Now I know serial killers can be dormant, but this usually has a reason – they’ve found a wife or steady girlfriend, they have young children they need to take care of, and so on. For Naso, he just didn’t do anything in Sacramento despite no life-changing circumstances, and then picked right up when he moved again. Right. Something doesn’t strike right.

About the list of 10, rather than do a search for missing people in the area, and running it through the missing persons database… why not look for the location itself? The list obviously states the dumping grounds of these victims. Naso, being a narcisstic bastard, didn’t even bother to write down their names. But he did write: “girl on mt. tam” and “girl near heldsburg mendocino co.” and so on. So how about, rather than to find missing people in the area, just go look for the bodies? Or better yet, look for bodies that have not yet been identified in the area or murders yet unsolved, and see if it matches Naso’s modus operandi.

Maybe that’s been done. I don’t know – the author never mentions it. The way he mentions it, police hardly did anything with this evidence despite working on the case for a year before it going to court, which I find highly unlikely. He apparently did some investigating too, but never found any of the girls mentioned on the list, or their possible dumping ground, or even a missing person who could match one of the girls on the list.

Six of the locations on the list match up with Naso’s victims, so it’s probably safe to assume the other four do too. It breaks my heart to think those victims may never be found, or if they’re found, their remains may never be matched and their identity may remain unknown. Naso himself isn’t talking either – he agreed to talked to the author, then refused to, so there’s not even an interview with Naso himself included in the book which I thought was another show of lack of research. I had at least expected an interview with Naso.

The author mentions the book is about the victims, not the murderer. I agree – I detest men like Naso as much as anyone else does. However, if we wish to understand what compells people to do these despicable things, if we wish to take a look under the veil and discover what brings people to kill another human being, then it’s necessary to talk to people like Naso, at least interview them once and get it over with. If you’re writing a book about his horrible killings, at least try to interview him and see if he’s willing to open up about anything. That would make the book’s research look far more complete, in my opinion.

So, while I picked up the book because I wanted to know more baout Naso and his victims and the book definitely accomplished that, I disliked the speculation on behalf of Naso and especially his victims, the lack of research, and also how repetitive the book was. The author mentioned five times (that I counted) that Naso’s son had schizophrenia. I can remember that after two mentions, thank you. The inconsistencies annoyed me too, especially the ones present when the author crawls into the victim’s minds.

Anyway, if you want to know more about Naso and his victims, the book does give more insight, not much more than what you can find online but if you wan’t to go look for it, it’s all nicely bundled up in this book. Not that bad, but not that great either.

As a student of criminology and serial killers myself back in my college years, I really appreciated the detail Swinney puts into "List of 10." He did justice to Naso's victims, but didn't shy away from the graphic psyche that is a serial killer. The book is obviously the result of years of persistent research, and incredibly informative. While the style tends to jump around, both in chronology and perspective, and parts of Naso's story are retold several times, overall, the subject is covered in depth and the reader walks away with a greater understanding of both the choices his victims made that put them in his path, and the limitations on law enforcement that allowed him to elude capture for decades. For those who are fascinated by the criminally disturbed mind, this is a great read.

I really struggled to finish this book, I am afraid.

I wanted to read it because I liked the premise of a True Crime book that does focuses on the victims and not the killer, but to me 'List of 10' did not come across that way. Sure, there were some life stories of the ladies from the list, but I still very much felt the book was about Joe Naso, covering not just factual review of his actions, but his thoughts, feelings, motivations, some psychoanalysis at the end...

Not that this is a problem - I rather like True Crime, and I was not familiar with Naso so I still should have enjoyed this book.

Alas, the writing was repetitive, to the point of actually recycling the full paragraphs in later chapters, I am not exaggerating. Since the book is not published in instalments, it does not make sense.

Joseph Naso is a scary person. It is unfathomable that he was able to rape, abuse, and kill for so long. C.L. Swinney does an incredible job telling A small part of this serial killers story. Although he does not get into much about his family life and string of rapes across the country, you are still able to feel how evil he is. This man actually gave me the chills and that doesn't happen often. This is a must read for all true crime fans.

Ordinarily, if I don't finish a book, I don't write a review. But in this case, I'm making an exception. I want to warn potential readers about this book.
I'm not squeamish or prudish, but I felt this book was downright creepy, and not in a good way. Of course a book about a serial killer will have lots of grisly scenes, and often sexual content, and I generally like true crime novels. But the way the author described the inner thoughts and feelings of the killer disgusted me. How could he possibly know this? Did the killer describe to him this moment by moment account of his thoughts, feelings, and bodily reactions over a period of years? It's highly unlikely. Obviously, his account of the thoughts of the victims was completely imaginary as well. This seemed dishonest to me if the book is nonfiction.

Be aware that there are a lot of graphic sexual references. The killer describes the "blood rushing to his penis" six times and discusses masturbating several times. I think we can assume that a man who is turned on by murdering women probably has these physical manifestations. To mention it once or twice at the beginning might be fine, but after that it's excessive.
That is one of the major problems. Instead of trusting the reader to understand from context, he elaborates on things that should be obvious. And he does that constantly. It felt a bit condescending, and the wordiness was annoying.
An example:
Killer: "Hello. What’s a girl like you doing out at this hour?” "The girl laughed and sized him up. “You know what I’m doing. Are you looking for some company tonight?” There’s no possible way Tracy would have known the man she courted for sex in exchange for cash secretly enjoyed murdering girls like her. She could not have known the terrible fate that awaited her, either."
The last two sentences are obvious and unnecessary to move the plot along.
As I said, I love true crime books and have read many of them by many different authors. This is the first I truly disliked and could not finish.
Note: I received an eARC from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

This book is about serial killer Joseph Naso who nearly got away with decades of being a rapist, misogynist, and murderer. He was already in his seventies and living in Nevada, still on probation for minor stuff when he shoplifted yet again and got caught, despite being more than able to afford the items. Some suspicious cops decided to do a thorough search of his hoarder looking place and came up with some incredible stuff packed away in the mess.

By the time they were finished, they had lots to investigate while he was held in jail for violating his probation. They'd found his "List of 10" that they figured were victims he'd killed over the decades which was written in code that only he understood. Then there were his notes of rapes and other crimes going back to the 1950's or earlier. They had their work cut out for them, but did a great job with what they had to work with. Overall I ended up pleased with this book, though there was one point where I thought my ereader had jumped backward (it hadn't). My thanks to NetGalley and RJ Parker Publishing for providing me an ebook for review purposes.

Normally we read true crime books that concentrate on the killer and not the victims so much. This book concentrates on the full picture; killer, victims, law enforcement, etc. This is one of the best true crime books I have read in a long time. It is so very well written that you are drawn in from page one and you want to keep reading. Joseph Naso needed to be caught. His ego and thoughts of being smarter than others, ultimately led to his downfall. He is the epitome of a control freak, has to be in control of everything. For this man to have been married with children, makes his crimes and ways of thinking that much more deplorable. The addition of knowing about the victims put the icing on the cake. Great read, if you are a fan of the true crime genre, you are doing yourself an injustice by not reading this book. This is my first time reading this author, but it will not be my last. Thanks to NetGally, the author and the publisher for the ARC copy of this book in return for my honest review.