Smooth Operator: The True Story of Seductive Serial Killer Glen Rogers by Clifford Linedecker (December 1997)

Short Story, Yes. Book, No.
Review by Kim Cantrell

Glen Rogers was born in Kentucky but grew up in Hamilton, Ohio. At the age of 19, he learned his 14-year-old girlfriend was pregnant. Following a postponed shotgun wedding, he loaded his wife and kid up and headed out to California.

And for the next several years, he would crisscross the country; killing redheaded women along the way.

The women who fell victim to Rogers were (usually) at the little honky tonks where he liked to drink. These women who were vunerable and trying to get their lives together were prime targets for Rogers.

Finally he would be caught, and states would battle it out to determine who got the first shot at trying a man labeled by the press as The Cassanova Killer.

I’ve never been a fan of true crime author Clifford L. Linedecker, always finding his books to be tedious and mundane; but I keep giving him the benefit of the doubt by at least trying his books.

His 1997 book about Glen Rogers titled Smooth Operator was no different than the others. Tedious, mundane, boring.

And filled with crap. For example, take this paragraph from page 187:

Rogers was rapidly becoming a part of Kentucky’s folklore, the dark counterpart of earlier figures like sharpshooting frontiersman Daniel Boone; sixteenth president Abraham Lincoln, who guided the nation through the heartbreak of the Civil War; and the tragic Floyd Collins, who inspired an enduring ballad when he died in 1925, after he was trapped in a cave he was exploring with friends. The young Kentuckian lived for eighteen days, pinned under a boulder while rescue crews worked feverishly to free him, and curiousity seekers flocked to the cave by the thousands, setting up food, tents, hawking popcorn, peanuts, cotton candy, and souvenirs.

What the -?! And this isn’t the only fluff you’ll find in the book, just one example.

Did Linedecker have a word quota to meet?

I really believe Smooth Operator will be the last Linedecker book I read. It was atrocious, and proof that he has a writing style that’s better suited as a sleep aid than entertainment.

Glen Rogers’ story would have been interested in short story form, but to get it out of this book is a complete and utter waste of time.

More books written about this case: The Cross Country Killer by Joyce Spizer (5 stars/2 Reviews) and Road Dog by Stephen Combs and John Eckberg (5 stars/2 Reviews).

Want to read it? Here’s where you can find it:
                    

Glen Rogers received a second death sentence from California in 1999. He was returned that same year to Florida’s death row, where he remains today. Before being shipped back to Florida, where prisoner’s are not permitted to have internet service unlike those in California, Rogers mantained a website that constantly lashes out at the legal system.

Edna Rogers, Glen’s mother, passed away in November 2006.