Maniac is the true story of a forgotten mass murderer by the name of Andrew Kehoe. Kehoe has the dubious distinction of being the first, and for the longest time, the worst Mass murder in American history. Kehoe on May 18, 1927, detonated a set of rigged explosives with the sole purpose of destroying a newly built school in Bath, Michigan and everyone in it. Thirty-eight children and six adults were murdered that morning, culminating in the deadliest school massacre in US history.

Schecter is a true-crime author who specializes in serial killers. I’ve read a few of his other books and essays on the subject. I’m not a big fan of true crime when it involves modern killers but I admit I am fascinated by the serial killers of the early days in our country. So many got away with some of the most heinous crimes and I think Kehoe might have gotten away with his murder of these children if he had not chosen to have one last hoorah, killing himself and three others as people frantically, just a few feet away, dug in the rubble of the Bath school to save their babies. This final act also put Kehoe in the annals for the first car bombing in America.

Now his story alone is interesting enough to warrant a book about it, and Schecter is a very thorough researcher, leaving little untold or undocumented.

I did have a few issues, minor I suppose, but I found some of the history going on at the same time, such as Lindberg’s flight from New York to Paris, a strange sidetrack to take right as Kehoe blows up the school. I admit I was confused at first. What did Charles Lindberg have to do with all of this? Nothing that I could see until almost 4 chapters later, Schecter explains his point, which was basically how an event even this horrible can be pushed from the front pages by a more interesting topic. Something we see all the time now. He jumps again to other killers, seemingly to no purpose until later when he connects the dots for us.
I really didn’t need him to explain how Kehoe led Columbine, Sandy Hook, Parks High School, or the killing of the Amish Children in Pennsylvania. Every action must start somewhere...mass school shootings and killings had Kehoe.

All in all, a very interesting history lesson that shows we have not come very far at all.

I received this book free from Little A, and Netgalley for my honest, unbiased review.

This is a quick read, though very well researched. An absolutely horrific event, though I'm not sure I agree with the authors assessment that it paved the way for school shootings. If you liked Hell's Princess you'll be enthralled by this little known mass murder.

This book reads like a textbook for an Abnormal Psucholofy class. So much information in one text-not only about killers but history also. It was difficult to read and not a book one would reread.
That being said, it is full of information the reader might not know before taking on this tome of knowledge. Well researched.

Maniac is an amazing piece of work, but it also hurts like hell. Harold Schechter is thorough and devastating in this true crime chronicle of a "human time bomb" whose acts of violence seem to foreshadow an era of mass murder and bombings.

Schechter consulted books, newspapers, journals, census records, and so much more to detail the lives of so many people and communities together in order to accurately tell the story of The Bath School Disaster. There are so many elements that played a part in making this book as good as it was. The background into the area that would become Bath, the life stories of the immigrants who would give birth to Andrew Kehoe, the contemplation on the public's tendency to remember certain crimes for generations while others, such as this one, that are just as publicized and heinous are forgotten almost overnight. The inclusion of other events throughout the story to help you understand what was shaping the way people lived at the time, and even to remind you of all the things happening at once that you don't think about, was incredible.

Using records, quotes, and facts, Schechter gives you the information you need to make your own analysis. Andrew Kehoe was the first son born after six daughters and thus pressure was placed on him to be the heir, especially in comparison to his siblings' successful lives. Placed on a pedestal and developing a pathologically inflated sense of self-importance. Reportedly a genius who was cold and distant, as well as a loner. You read the reports from others that show cruelty in the first half of his life. For true crime readers this book has a little bit of everything that we tend to see and study in a mass murderer, but with a relatively above average life at the time and a seemingly good environment what could have caused it?

In the climax of the story, the events leading up to and during the bombing of the school, my heart was palpitating. The short snapshots throughout this chapter felt like the flashing scenes in a movie before bad things happen that drive up your anxiety. The worst part was the aftermath. The newspaper reports and witness accounts of the reactions of the parents and the community, as they lose 45 people to Kehoe's horrifying act, most of them children. This book's worst quality is that it's so real.

While my heart is aching after reading this, I can't help but be impressed with Harold Schechter and his ability to put these events to paper with so much going on at once, and to have me at the edge of my seat the whole time I was reading it. This is definitely an author who stands out, and one who I'll have to read more from.

Thank you to NetGalley, Little A, and Harold Schechter for this advanced review copy, this was a great book to read and you broke my heart.

4.5 Stars

For the love of God! This man, Andrew P. Kehoe, was a twat-ass-bastard-piece of sh*t!



I didn’t know anything about this man until this book...or maybe I did and chemo brain fogged the history.

This one man was the greatest mass murderer of children in American history!! Not to mention animals and adults he killed! He deserved to be quartered and set on fire but I digress. He took care of himself at any rate.

This man would have killed more people if some of his plan didn’t go awry. Can you even imagine!!

I felt like the author did a wonderful job of finding out as much information as he could with what was given.

Kehoe destroyed the Bath Consolidated School and it was horrific. Everything he did was horrific and I must say there are graphic scenes in the book.



The author also filled in other tidbits of history inside this story.

I’m going to leave with a quote. They had a special ceremony years later and invited the 9 surviving members of the massacre.

Fifty years after Andrew Kehoe perpetrated his unspeakable act-the greatest mass murder of children in America history-nine elderly women and men who had lived through that calamitous day walked up to the stage and received their diplomas.


Yeah, I cried!!

*Thank you to Netgalley and Little A for a digital copy of this book.

Mel 🖤🐶🐺🐾

Harold Schechter juxtaposes the heinous actions of "seriously troubled" Andrew P. Kehoe against the backdrop of U. S. and world events in the early decades of the Twentieth Century in this novel that demands to be read in one sitting. The novel chronicles the egregious actions of Kehoe, who proclaims himself a victim, in a chilling, thoroughly-researched, true crime novel about the first mass killing In the United States. In stripped-down prose, Schecter presents this crime against society that presaged the mass killings of Columbine, Sandy Hook, and many others in recent history.