Bill James

The Sultan of Stats has turned amateur sleuth, said

in Publishers Weekly. Bill James, famous for subjecting baseball to a type of deep statistical analysis that has changed the game, has also long been a true-crime aficionado. He first made that passion public with 2011’s Popular Crime, his survey of famous American murders. Now he has tackled a century-old unsolved serial-murder case. The Man From the Train, which James co-wrote with his daughter, Rachel McCarthy James, details the pair’s attempt to identify the ax murderer responsible for a string of slayings—including the 1912 slaughter of eight people on a farm in Villisca, Iowa. James claims that the task called upon the same methods he applies to sports. “I’m the same person—an analytical person, as opposed to an intuitive person.”

The web deserves credit, too, said in The Kansas City Star. James and his daughter prowled through online newspaper and library archives to find other ax murders from that era, eventually developing a list of 30 commonalities that linked as many as 95 killings. All took place in sparsely populated areas within walking distance of railroad tracks; virtually all the victims were bludgeoned while they slept, and with an ax’s blunt end. If the Jameses are right, the man they eventually name is among the most prolific serial killers in American history. They hope fellow researchers will take up the case to solidify it. Meanwhile, James is content to return to his baseball duties. “I like athletes,” he says. “There is nothing to like about the Man From the Train.”