Lone Star Literary Life Magazine to feature an Interview and Author Spotlight with Martin pertaining to this book. Stay tuned for more details.

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March 2025  Review by Award-Winning Author, David L. Kilpatrick

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"Review: Homicide in the Hood by Kelli Martin

Reviewed by: David L. Kilpatrick, Author – Noah the Wanderer

March 2025

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This book is a true crime story that is a little different than most of this genre: the author has a personal connection with the stories because she not only was a resident of the area, but was personally acquainted with several of the victims.

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“Hood” as referred to in the title is not the modern meaning. It refers to Hood County, Texas, a rural county southwest of the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex. In that, this book is as much an homage to small-town life in the 1980’s and 90’s as it is a chronology of events.

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Ms. Martin is an educated an experienced investigator and can rattle off minute details of scientific forensics and blood evidence. But she can also tell her story in a down-home, conversational style as if she were sitting with you having a beer or an iced tea. This ability is lacking in this genre, where the writing is often dry and lecturing like a police workroom debriefing.

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Several high-profile murders are explored, girls and women killed for little if any reason, and the perpetrators often unknown and never prosecuted. I won’t go into the details of these but will say that they have common threads: police territorialism, overworked, underpaid and underfunded small police departments, lack of technology, and slippery, off-the-radar suspects.

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There are two interesting things about this book. First, the experience of the author and her summary explanations on both the history of forensic investigation techniques and their practical use, and secondly and most important, her exploration into the impact of the crimes on family and community.

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For many of these families, the survivors or “co-victims” of the murders, this book was the first and only means by which they were allowed to tell their side and even vent their horror and grief. These crimes happened over 30 years ago but seeing their words now, one can see the “generational trauma” that Kelli explains. Stanton Samanow, one of the forefathers in the study of psychopathy, called it the “wake of destruction” left behind by violent criminals. This wake is still reverberating in the lives of those families, decades later, and this book does a small part in helping them heal a little.

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Aficionados of true crime will enjoy the slice-of-life tales from Granbury, Texas that the author spins throughout. It helps break up the terror and heartbreak of real-life murder, and the impact of murder on family, friends and community is eye-opening."

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February 25,2025  Editor in Chief of Literary Titan, Thomas Anderson, gives Homicide in the Hood five stars!

 

November 22, 2024 7:00 p.m.

The Book Launch Party held on Saturday November 16 at the Hood County LIbrary was standing room only and was the most powerful thing I have ever witnessed.  People in the community are behind this book. If they are not, that should tell you something.

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