On September 6,1949, twenty-eight-year-old Howard Barton Unruh shot thirteen people in less than twelve minutes on his block in East Camden, New Jersey. The shocking true story of the first recorded mass shooting in America has never been told, until now.

The sky was cloudless that morning when twelve-year-old Raymond Havens left his home on River Road. His grandmother had sent him to get a haircut at the barbershop across the street - where he was about to witness his neighbour and friend Howard open fire on the customers inside.

Told through the eyes of the young boy who visited Howard regularly to listen to his war stories, and the mother trying to piece together the disturbing inner workings of her son’s mind, Ellen Green uncovers the chilling true story of Howard Unruh - the quiet oddball who meticulously plotted his revenge on the neighbours who shunned him and became one of America’s first mass killers.

With access to Howard’s diaries, newly released police reports and psychiatric records alongside interviews with surviving family members and residents of the neighbourhood, A Murder in the Neighbourhood will have readers of In Cold Blood, If You Tell and American Predator absolutely gripped.

‘An engrossing and utterly fascinating insight into a chilling and untold part of American history… impossible to put down.’ Gregg Olsen, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of If You Tell.