A compelling story of an investigation into the death of Hazel Drew. Even so many years after the fact, the investigation leaves more questions than answers. The unusual nature of her life and death would go on to inspire the Twin Peaks television series that so many people were obsessed with. As David Bushman unwinds the story, it will become easy to see why so many followed Hazel's last steps.

I love being given a bunch of clues and then trying to solve a mystery. Murder at Teal's Pond is a book that allows me to do so.
Murder at Teal's Pond is a detailed account of the murder of Hazel Drew, a young woman found beaten to death over 120 years ago. The authors have written an impressively detailed account of the investigation using copious amounts of research taken from the police investigation. The book reads like a documentary, revealing evidence clearly and methodically. If you love true crime, you will find this book fascinating.

It took me awhile to get through this. Not my favorite True Crime book - but it did a good job of presenting the facts and telling the story. I personally just felt it was somewhat tedious reading. It's all there and I left knowing all the details, but it just didn't grab me and make me want to keep reading. Very well researched and all the important players are there with detailed interviews and evidence. 3.5 stars.

I had a hard time reading this from the beginning. I just did not just captured in it. The story is about Hazel Drew, a young lady that was murdered in the early 1900s. The crime itself is historically well written and researched, I just was not captured by it. Thank you to NetGalley for the oppurtunity to read and review.

I am going to preface this review with stating that I know nothing about Twin Peaks and I have never watched the television series. I certainly have heard of Twin Peaks, but didn’t really have any substantial knowledge going into reading this book. I was selected to read an early advanced copy of this book through NetGalley and what really drew me into selecting this book was the fact that it was true crime and based on a real murder mystery. Little did I know that the murder featured in this book was the backstory used in Twin Peaks.

Hazel Drew was in her early twenties when her body was found floating in Teal’s Pond located in Sand Lake, New York in 1908. She was working as a domestic servant for a middle-class family in Troy, New York when she abruptly quit her job. None of her family and friends knew why she quit her job or where she went after doing so. In the next few days, Hazel would travel, see some friends, and ultimately be found dead floating in Teal’s Pond by campers. No one had any clue as to how she ended up dead and who murdered her. Her family and friends were investigated by the police and while there were some promising developments at the time, the case still remains unsolved today.

This is a non-fiction read but flows and reads as fiction. I thought the writing was very well done and engaging and it kept my attention throughout. There were some parts that were repetitive, but nothing that took away from the telling of this story. The authors go further and make their own determinations as to what happened and who killed Hazel Drew. Of course, we really don’t know the real story of what happened to Hazel Drew, but the authors provide a good scenario for what could have happened to her on that July evening in 1908. This was a fun and intriguing true crime novel that I am glad that I have the privilege to read and review.

Overall Rating: 4.5 stars
Authors: David Bushman & Mark T. Givens

Series: N/A

Publisher: Thomas & Mercer

Publication Date: January 1, 2022

Pages: 335

Genre: Nonfiction

Get It: Amazon

Disclaimer: This book was given to me by the publisher, through NetGalley, in exchange for my honest review. I reviewed this book without compensation of any kind. All thoughts and opinions are solely mine.

Interesting read all in all, but I’d probably have preferred it as a (long, possibly two-part) magazine feature rather than a whole book.
I’m sure this was very exciting to research and write, it’s just that there’s only so much substance to the story. I felt that there were too many suspects, or rather people of (vague) interest and (vague) connection built up into suspects at the expense of common sense. Also, it made for a slightly irksome read, following the authors down all the little alleyways of some person’s life, their relationship to the murder victim and other actors in this story etc., only to find out later after interminable chapters of build-up that they likely are not the perpetrator. I mean, it’s all conjecture, obviously, and it felt a bit icky to have someone’s life spread out and poked at like this, especially since that person is long gone but his descendants might still be around and be less than thrilled to find Grandpa the subject of what might well be slander.
Also, we don’t know these people. We can’t know how they talked, what they thought, how they felt about Hazel Drew. Yes, this is billed as creative nonfiction, but I still found it a tad cringe-y to read dialogue the authors put into people’s mouths. There are some stylistic mannerisms, e.g. coffee is always “piping-hot”, that got grating after a while. We take quite some detours into subject matters adjacent, but not really connected to the major storyline, e.g. the political aspirations of Hazel’s employers or the history and layout of the city of Troy, further buffering an already well-padded out tale.

And then there’s the main protagonist (I think?) and ostensibly the reason this book was even written, who also happens to be the greatest question mark of all.
With a project like this, there’s always a very fine line between evocative re-imagination and exploitation/sensationalism, which became especially hard to ignore when it came to the events surrounding the discovery of Hazel’s body. A lot of, I’m tempted to say “loving” detail is spent on the description of post-mortem physical changes: “It was a gruesome sight – the skin wrinkled and blackened, her face frozen in a rictus. The woman’s eyes bulged from their sockets, drooping onto her cheeks. Her swollen tongue protruded a good two inches from her mouth. The rotten corpse was severely bloated”, and so on. This, by the way, is from Chapter One. (The bulging eyes, bloating and swollen tongue get repeated mention throughout the text, too, in case you managed to somehow repress the image of the dead, no, *rotting* 20-year-old girl.)
Maybe I’m just squeamish, but to me that’s spectacularly tasteless in a book that’s dealing with a real-life murder – I wouldn’t be happy to stumble across a passage like this in a Stephen King novel, but we’re talking about an actual girl here, so the ick factor shouldn’t even come into it. At all. It’s like just because poor Hazel has been dead these 110+ years, the authors don’t owe her the decency of delicacy. I mean, “the body was in bad shape after several days in the water” would have been enough, IMO.
We really don’t know much about who Hazel was as a person, apart from the fact that she was pretty, had a lot of admirers and liked to dress better than seemed possible on a servant girl’s wages. Personally, I think it’s a shame as well as unfair that, even with a book written about her, she remains not only a dead girl, but now, thanks to the prose of these two writers, a *very* dead girl, a nasty, smelly, horrifyingly bloated putrifying thing.

At the end the authors offer their own theory of events, which sound plausible, but again, we just don’t know. It all felt a bit much ado about nothing. By then I had started skimming, because I just couldn’t handle the Suspect X/Let’s list all the details! spiel any longer. Like I said, an article would have been great, but to me it felt that in order to get to a certain page count, the authors threw everything they conceivably could at their thin little tale, and it took away from the reading enjoyment for me.
And no, I won’t even mention the Twin Peaks angle, because it’s even less substantial than the armchair murder investigation.

My sincere thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the chance to read an ARC of this book.

⭐⭐⭐.5 -- Love the cover!

This was certainly an intriguing read. I think this is the first time I have read a "creative nonfiction" book. 🤔 Basically, this is about a century-old murder of Hazel Drew that inspired Twin Peaks (still one of the best shows ever. 🙌🏻) Three-fourths of this book was very good. You could tell it was well researched. It held my interest (even if there were way too many people to keep track of and it got repetitive). However, I found the last quarter to drag on. I really didn't care at that point what happened in the future to practically every character mentioned. It definitely could have been trimmed up a bit! That said, it was still an interesting read and gets a solid thumbs up from your truly.

**ARC Via NetGalley**

I remember watching the first creepy and offbeat season of Twin Peaks, so, I was intrigued by this book that describes the real life case that inspired the show. In 1908 near Troy, New York State, twenty-year old Hazel Drew was found in Teal Pond, days after someone had killed her.

An investigation ensued, with interviews with her parents, relatives, friends, and former employers, for whom she had worked as a maid for three, separate, prominent, Republican families.

There were things that never quite lined up and, questions remained about Hazel’s life. More digging into her background surfaced contradictory pictures of the young woman: 1) quiet, well-mannered, liked to read, and not interested in parties and the like. And 2) a lively, personable, spirited, travel-loving woman who attracted the attention of several men, as discovered by numerous letters she had received from them.

The press latched onto the case (the blonde Hazel was seen as a beauty), and wrote numerous stories about her, her family, the investigators’ progress, or lack thereof, and anything the press could make up or inflate about the case.

Little progress was made in the investigation, except for exposing the fact that her family was very close-lipped about her, even considering the secrets coming out about her two personas, her sudden quitting of her job in Troy, the gaps investigators found in her travels the last few days of her life, and the numerous, sometimes contradictory, sometimes false, eyewitness accounts of her last few hours. No resolution was ever found to this case.

The authors do a great job giving us a picture of the social and actual landscape of this part of New York State, Hazel’s family, and the mindset of the period, and how the investigation was marred from the outset by poor procedures, and likely political interference at some point.

From the discovery of her body floating in Teal Pond, to the authors’ proposed reveal of the perpetrator, I was entertained and frankly, horrified by the numerous instances of incompetence, and intrigued by conflicting statements, not entirely forthcoming witnesses, frenzied and often completely false stories by journalists, and the too-close relationship between the investigators and the Republican Party, with public fears of political interference and suppression of facts.

The authors’ proposed resolution to the case was interesting, based as it was on five years of research, and seems plausible. Interestingly, while reading, I had wondered how the investigators could have so easily missed or dismissed a few odd occurrences the last evening of Hazel’s life.

The story certainly held my interest, except for some of the descriptions of the political landscape of the area, as this was pretty dry, but otherwise, the authors kept me reading to the end.

Thank you to Netgalley and to Thomas & Mercer for this ARC in exchange for my review.

It’s a well-researched true crime book that can get into the weeds at times. There are lots of characters and the writer sometimes gets ahead of the story. Still, taking a second look at a century-old mystery always makes for a good read.

This is a comprehensive and well-researched nonfiction account of a 110+ year old murder investigation that failed to identify, let alone convict, a suspect, but inspired ghost stories and the Twin Peaks character of Laura Palmer. Hazel Drew's body was found in Teal's Pond, in Sand Lake, New York, in the summer of 1908. She suffered what was described as a lethal blow to the head and was dead before being put into the water several days before being found. Investigators initially identified several suspects, but none seemed to pan out, the press got (a little too?) involved in the investigation, family members did not seem forthcoming about some aspects of Hazel's life, and witnesses changed their stories. The book starts off slowly, introducing all of the characters and providing background on the region and the political and social culture of the time, but it picks up as the authors get into the nitty gritty of the story. At the end, they provide their own interpretation on what may have happened and, while very plausible, it doesn't feel like it explains everything and was a bit of a let-down, given the potential for a much juicier motive. But I guess that is nonfiction for you! Overall, a good read.

There is nothing more that I appreciate when an author/authors, really do their research.

I can not tell you how many times I have been turned off from a book that when I start reading I am instantly overwhelmed with the fact that I can not get past how untrue it actually is. This was not the case with Murder at Teal's Pond. David Bushman and Mark T. Givens genuinely did the work and put some elbow grease into putting the facts on the page, and it showed.

The murder of Hazel Drew, took the nation by storm and captivated an audience. I love that this was a true crime book but also incorporated some story telling. This novel was fluid and entertaining. This is a true murder mystery that will have you guessing and playing detective the whole way through.

I highly recommend this book to all true crime loving fans! You do not want to miss this one!

I got this book because it proclaimed to be the true story that inspired the classic "Twin Peaks" and the ominous phrase "Who killed Laura Palmer?" How exciting is that? However, when I really looked at it I wondered, would the story of a murder from 1908, undoubtedly full of holes and missing data and antiquated times hold up as an interesting story? The dramatis personae list at the beginning seemed intimidating as well, as it went of for three pages. Was I really expected to keep all those names straight without a scorecard?
However, it didn't take long at all to realize any fears of this being disappointing or unsatisfying were unfounded. The writing is presented in the manner that all the better true crime tales are, doling out some seemingly unconnected background details to give you an idea of the times and the peoples' motivation, but never going on too much longer than needed before connecting them back to the overall narrative.
At times the book feels a bit repetitive, but admittedly the repeats of details seem to be to refresh the reader's recollection in case they forgot. But besides that the story unfolds in a mostly linear fashion, with flashbacks and backtracking only when some new details come to light in the investigation requiring the past be brought up.
With this book being based on the story that inspired Mark Frost's part of writing the original "Twin Peaks" it surprisingly at times does play out in the puzzling manor of the show's mystery, while the actual murder investigation keeps you riveted wanting to see where it goes next. There are definitely instances where you can see "TP" characters and locals modeled on people and places from the actual historical event.The fact that the authors conclude the book with their own possible/likely answer for the crime made it that much of an anticipatory read. I wanted to know all the background and details, but I really wanted to know who dun' it!
This was a very well-written, engaging and interesting tale, although what passed for "salacious" 113 years ago isn't quite as eye raising today. Overall I enjoyed the book a bunch and it was very cool learning the true history behind "Twin Peaks." 4.5/5*

This crime story was a decent read.
I thought it started off a little slow for my liking.
But overall a good quick read.
The writing was good. The characters are well developed..
And this plot is well put together.
The dialogue is realistic and was very well done.
Overall, A good intriguing story.

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Thomas & Mercer,
Thank You for your generosity and gifting me a copy of this amazing eARC!
I will post my review closer to pub date.