Are murderers born or made? Does one episode of lost control define an entire lifetime? Can familial love transcend any barrier, even the bars of a prison cell?
Those unanswerable questions lie at the heart of The Curse of the Blumenthals, part true-crime thriller and part genealogical record of a troubled Brookline family.
The book, published in May, was written by investigative journalist Phyllis Karas, the first cousin of the man remembered in newspaper headlines as the Brookline “Thrill Killer.”
At the center of the book is a murder from more than 70 years ago that the Blumenthal descendants are still trying to understand and process.