Columbine by Dave Cullen

Columbine by Dave Cullen

On April 21, 1999, I walked past an elementary school playground, on my way from my college campus to a convenience store, and I heard screaming. For a moment, my blood went cold. I ran up to the chain link fence and scanned the blacktop for guns or knives or boys in trench coats. But the screaming was just the screaming of kids who'd been cooped up all afternoon and were thrilled to be running around and playing with their friends. Everyone was happy. Everyone was fine.

It was the day after Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold came onto the Columbine High School campus, loaded up with guns and bombs and massacred their classmates. I was a student teacher at a local high school, and suddenly, I was worried about my kids, everybody's kids, in a way I'd never worried before.

Over the next few weeks, I followed the tragedy, and formed certain impressions based on the stories I'd read - troubled, outcast boys; bullied at school; little parental supervision; trench coat mafia; violent video games; popular kids and jocks targeted.

Reading Cullen's book, it's amazing how pervasive the myths about Columbine that circulated in the media following the tragedy were, and how few of them were true. In the years that have passed, more truth has come to light; however, the nation's eye was no longer on Columbine High School, and though the ideas we held about the crime have faded from our memories, they haven't much changed.

Columbine is a meticulously researched, remarkably sensitive book that seeks to create a comprehensive, rational record of the facts. It's not sensational, and there are no photographs, a hallmark of the true crime genre. It's also not an easy thing to read.

The night I began the book, I was grateful for the lack of pictures as I fell asleep. The killers' names swam up into my head, but thankfully, I couldn't conjure their faces, or any other of the images of Columbine, and I didn't want to. The account Cullen pieces together from thousands of pages of official reports and hundreds of interviews and media accounts is disturbing enough.

Cullen responsibly explains many of the stories that evolved around the massacre, and unveils the ways in which Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold fell through the safety nets of school, home, friends, and law enforcement without pointing fingers. He is slightly more damning, if sympathetic, about flaws in the police response to Columbine. After all, students' bodies were left where they fell more than a day after the shootings; Dave Sanders, the only teacher to die in the shootings, might have lived if SWAT teams had acted sooner; the Jefferson County Sheriff's Department hid and destroyed incriminating documents about Eric Harris.

Still, Cullen is hesitant to to assign malicious intent or blame to anyone involved in the response effort, or to families after the fact (the killers' included). Harris and Klebold are a different story, but Cullen also unfolds the dynamics of their personalities and their relationship in a responsible and well-documented fashion. It's almost possible to feel sympathy for Klebold, a suicidally depressed boy, who, had he not come under Harris's influence, might have gone an entirely different way. Harris, on the other hand, is portrayed as a young, but full-blown psychopath, adept at manipulation and bent on mass annihilation.

Columbine skips around in its chronology, never lingering too long on any one part of the shooting, the events that led up to it, or the events that followed, and perhaps that is what made me able to finish it.

When I bought this book, I felt like a sicko, that I'd even read a book about something so awful.

But when I'd finished it, I felt some sense of calm, that a crime I'd had so many false impressions about had been clarified for me, that I now understood both the sickness of the killers, but also, the bravery and struggle of the survivors.

And that's why I would encourage people to read it. Columbine is an example of investigative journalism at its best. It's an effort to make sense of a tragedy, relying upon a foundation of talking to and understanding the people impacted by it. It was a terrible story that needed to be told responsibly and comprehensively out of respect to those who lived through it, and Dave Cullen has done that.

Crimes of the Centuries: True Crime: An American Anthology

True Crime: An American Anthology, edited by Harold Schechter

Among true crime writers, there are those who pride themselves on their lack of literary flourish and color, and those who sensationalize every gory detail. Some focus on the victims, and others on the perpetrators. Some present a crime story with objective balance, while others are more than willing to serve as judge, jury, and executioner to perpetrator and victim alike.

In True Crime: An American Anthology, literature professor, novelist, and true crime writer Harold Schechter plucks examples from all of these types, and creates a loosely chronological record of American true crime writing over the past 350 years, from Puritan leaders William Bradford and Cotton Mather, to recent pieces from James Ellroy and Ann Rule. The anthology also includes selections from a number of figures you'd never consider to be true crime writers: Abraham Lincoln, Benjamin Franklin, Calvin Trillin, and Zora Neale Hurston.

Some of the cases are still well-known today, some have faded from recent memory, and others were obscure and ignored, even in their time. Hurston's piece, "The Trial of Ruby McCollum," about an African-American woman accused of murdering her white lover, a prominent, married physician, with whom she'd had a child, is one of the collection's high points. Hurston focuses on how the black and white communities gradually come to the same consensus about how justice ought to be served (though for very different reasons), and on the show trial that's more about placating the community than uncovering the truth.

Meyer Berger won a Pulitzer for "Veteran Kills 12 in Mad Rampage on Camden Street," an account of the shooting spree carried out by a psychologically unhinged man named Howard Unruh against people he believed had "talked about him." The piece is masterfully written, and Berger's minute-by-minute account of the massacre is chilling, especially given some of its similarities to murders committed by Michael McLendon in Alabama this week.

Another excellent piece is John Bartlow Martin's "Butcher's Dozen," about the police investigation of the Cleveland "torso murders," where the murderer was never caught, and most of his victims never identified. Martin, later an ambassador and a speechwriter for Adlai Stevenson and John F. Kennedy, focuses on police efforts to infiltrate the most poverty-stricken parts of Depression era Cleveland - shantytowns, hobo camps, and clapboard rooming houses - both to find the killer, and to protect the city's most vulnerable residents from becoming victims themselves.

Schechter collects an exceptional range of pieces in this anthology, and some very good, thoughtful, complex writing at that.

The Past Isn't Over, It's Not Even Past: The Turnaround by George Pelecanos

The Turnaround by George Pelecanos

I suppose it's probably for the best that George Pelecanos took a break for most of the fourth season of The Wire to work on his previous novel, The Night Gardener. Heartbreaking as that season of television was, if Pelecanos had been there, it would have been emotional carnage.

This isn't to say that he was the best writer on that show (in that crowd, it's nearly impossible to pick), but in all of Pelecanos's writing, he demonstrates an almost preternatural ability to turn his characters inside out, sparing the reader nothing. It's not just the characterization, though. Pelecanos's characters exist in a moral universe that's guided by a strong sense of what it means to be good, what it means to have done wrong, and what it means to live with choices and mistakes made.

The moral crisis at the heart of The Turnaround begins on a summer night in 1972 when three white teenagers, buzzed on beer and weed, goad one another into driving through a black D.C. neighborhood. One boy shouts a racial slur, and another throws a fruit pie out the window. Unfamiliar with the neighborhood, they drive down a dead end street, where they are confronted by three black teenagers from the neighborhood.

One of the white boys runs away, another is given a beating that disfigures his face, and the third is shot in the back and killed. Two of the black teenagers are sentenced to prison terms. No one gets out unscathed.

The book moves forward 35 years, and from here, focuses mainly on two of the men involved in the incident. All charges were dropped against Raymond Monroe, a hot-headed youth who'd begun running with a bad crowd. After that night, Monroe leaves his old ways behind, and goes on to become a physical therapist at the Walter Reed Hospital. His only child is serving in Afghanistan, and helping veteran amputees learn to use their artificial limbs allows him to feel he's doing something to help, even if it doesn't help to soothe his fears for his son.

The other man is Alex Pappas, the boy who was beaten, the boy who sat in the back of the car and did nothing. His scarred face and ruined eye are the visible penance for his inaction, but Pappas lives most of his life as though he's still being punished for what happened all those years ago. He, too, had a son serve in the Middle East, but now that son is dead.

Pelecanos manages to bring the surviving characters together in a way that isn't contrived -- this isn't the sort of thing that can be resolved with a talk. Some characters are seeking oblivion and escape from the past, others want payback, and the resolution that Pappas and Monroe are looking for doesn't come easily.

Unlike Pelecanos's other books, The Turnaround isn't a crime novel in any traditional sense of the genre. There is crime, and a worthy villain, but more than anything else, the book is about the hard-won redemption of ruined lives. How things are eventually resolved is somewhat predictable, but the route there is anything but.

The Original Country House Murder: The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher by Kate Summerscale

The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher by Kate Summerscale

On the morning of June 30, 1860, the residents of the Kent household woke to discover that 3-year-old Saville Kent had gone missing from his bed. After a feverish search of the ground, the little boy's body was discovered, smothered, stabbed, nearly decapitated, and stuffed down the privy in the backyard.

After a largely botched investigation by local law enforcement, a new kind of police officer was dispatched from Scotland Yard, a detective by the name of Jonathan Whicher. Though detectives are now synonymous with the famed agency, the division had only been created in 1842, and Whicher was one of only eight detectives there. In the years leading up to what would be known as the Road House Murder, Whicher had made a name for himself solving spectacular crimes -- the theft of a priceless da Vinci painting, a rash of bank robberies, a jewel heist. He was the obvious choice for a murder so grisly and high profile that it would later inspire works by Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins.

Unfortunately for Whicher, the investigation would also bring about his downfall. After piecing together the little evidence that remained, Whicher announced his suspect, a member of the Kent family. By this time, the press and the public had already decided who they thought to be the guilty parties, and Whicher's reports laid out a very different scenario. By the end of 1860, charges against Whicher's suspect had been dropped, Whicher was vilified, and the murder remained unsolved -- and would continue to be until several years later.

Summerscale does an impressive job of piecing together newspaper reports and archival materials to create an account that reads with as much suspense and horror as a Victorian detective novel. She draws a full and likely portrait of the Kent family and its odd, reclusive dynamics, and also conveys the intrigue that surrounded the new figure of the Victorian-era detective and the public's awe and enthusiasm for such individuals.

However, there's one problem with the book, and perhaps one that would be insurmountable to any responsible writer of historic true crime. The characteristics that made Jonathan Whicher a good detective - elusiveness, inscrutability - make him a frustrating subject for a book. While snippets from letters and reports show Whicher to be a wry, inquisitive, and decent sort, Summerscale never really gets a handle on the central figure of her book. The Road House Murder may have been solved, but the detective who solved it remains as much a mystery as ever.

True Crime and the Smart Set

I've been reading Savage Grace by Natalie Robins and Steven M.L. Aronson, the 1985 true crime classic about the Baekeland family, heirs to the Bakelite fortune. For those unfamiliar with the story (or the 2007 film adaptation starring Julianne Moore), in 1972, Barbara Daly Baekeland was murdered by her son, Antony.

After the murder, all kinds of horrifying things came out about the family. Barbara had enlisted women to bed her son, who was gay, in an attempt to "fix" him, and there was some speculation that Barbara had seduced Antony herself. And then there was Barbara's husband, Brooks, who ran off with one of Antony's "girlfriends." That barely scratches the surface, but you can Wikipedia that business to learn more.

The surprising thing about the book is that Robins and Aronson got access to court proceedings, confidential medical records, Antony's letters written from prison and mental institutions, and pretty much the entire Baekeland family and their smart set friends for the book, which is edited as a compilation of these papers and interviews.

The interview subjects are like something right out of Cheever, bon vivants, idle rich jet-setters, wealthy artistic sorts, and the tossers-off of the well-placed beau geste. While talking about the crime, their stories are peppered with meals eaten, art purchased, places summered, parties thrown. As for the murder itself, it's spoken of as though it were an unfortunate, unpleasant thing, not a brutal, twisted crime. And Tony, that poor lamb.

Despite this tone, most of the subjects are rather keen to chat and make a good showing in the story. To read their accounts of the murder, you'd think that they'd personally been stabbed in the chest in a London kitchen, but that the whole thing had been rather a nuisance.

I haven't decided whether this is interesting or highly annoying yet, but I'll give it a few more chapters.

The Hard Road to Justice: Wicked City by Ace Atkins

Wicked City by Ace Atkins

"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." - Edmund Burke

A sleazy hive of bootlegging, illegal gambling halls, houses of prostitution, political corruption, and dirty cops who turned a blind eye, Look magazine called Phenix City, Alabama the "wickedest city in America." The town's innocent citizens were too afraid to challenge the status quo until 1954, when the Democratic candidate for attorney general, a reformer named Albert Patterson was gunned down in an alley by persons unknown.

Patterson's death marked the beginning of the end for that status quo. It was too egregious, too much of a finger in the eye to ignore, and it was undeniable proof that the good could not live alongside the wicked in Phenix City and do nothing.

Though Atkins's account is fictionalized, the major events are true and many of the principal characters are real. In a short note that prefaces the novel, Atkins writes, "No author could ever exaggerate the sin, sleaze, and moral decay of Phenix City, Alabama, in the fifties or the courage of the people who stood up to fight it."

It's good that he says it, because the extent of the vice that Atkins is about to describe boggles the mind with its sheer audacity. Young women and girls picked up for loitering are taken to prison, where the inside of their lower lip is tattooed, and their names are taken down for the Sheriff's records -- he gets a cut of their future profits when they're conscripted into prostitution. Madams, law enforcement, club owners, and elected officials form a twisted alliance of civic leadership, and everyone gets a cut.

Powerful and harrowing, Wicked City is not without flaws. Characterization emerges slowly, and it's difficult to distinguish many figures from one another, particularly the corrupt officials. Atkins also makes a narrative choice that I didn't care for, interspersing limited omniscient points of view with the first person narration of Lamar Murphy, a former boxer and filling station owner who becomes Phenix City's interim sheriff. Sometimes these changes in perspective occur within the same chapter, which is distracting and clumsy-feeling. However, these quibbles become less important, charging towards Phenix City's inevitable, yet satisfying purge of evil and vice.

Atkins's website features some excellent orientation to the real Phenix City of the 1950s, including newsreel footage of some of the key figures and images of its greatest villains and heroes.

If you liked...: Hell At the Breech by Tom Franklin, this book is for you.

Just the facts, man: Homicide by Leslie T. White

I came to Leslie White's Homicide by way of the Black Lizard Book of Pulps, or as I like to call it, "the Bible of Awesome." White's short story "The City of Hell" was...well, it was like a caper/heist flick mixed with Red Harvest and written on an ultimately wholesome bender. Sure, some yeggs get new buttonholes in their coats, and there is much talk of rats devouring certain characters' faces, but our heroes don't drink that much and won't let the family men in the group take the real risks. I quickly flipped to the little author blurb to discover that Mr. White also wrote novels, Homicide and Harness Bull (the basis for the film Vice Squad, in which Edward G. Robinson plays the cop for a change) among them. He also wrote Me, Detective in which he presents his own take on the Doheny murder case, having worked it as an investigator for the Los Angeles District Attorney's office.

Me, Detective was clearly the book I had to read for this week's Zombie Summer Reading.

Well, sometimes you brain the zombies and sometimes the zombies eat you. Me, Detective only made it through the first edition and is thus a little pricey if you can find a copy, and the reference copy at the library was A.W.O.L.

Homicide nevertheless made a dandy substitute: burglary cop Steve Muttersbach is detailed into a murder investigation when a nightclub owner/lady of ill-repute is found strangled in her coupe, shortly after he investigates a break-in at her apartment.

Sure, it's a little hacky. The prose is nothing to write home about, the plot is a parlor mystery in hardboiled clothing, and it lacks the inspired lunacy of "The City of Hell."

But what it lacks in style it makes up for in concept: the chapters are a series of letters and telegrams from our clearly-out-of-his-depth hero to a retired Homicide Detective buddy, with interview transcripts, police reports, and newspaper clippings attached. (Someday, somewhere, a graduate student will use the novel as evidence that postmodernism was blossoming in the pulps before it ever hit the academic presses.)

And there's something charming about Muttersbach, a cop whose chance to step up to the show came a few years too late but who nevertheless dives into the investigation like a catcher with bad knees and one last shot at the pennant.* The comic subplots involving a flirty tabloid reporter, Muttersbach's increasingly estranged relationship with his wife, and the indignities visited upon our hapless flatfoot by his superiors when he roughs up a politically connected suspect, also liven up the proceedings considerably.

All in all, Homicide reads like the source material for what could have been an excellent Warner Brothers B-picture, which I guess is kind of what it is. It's not a lost classic by any means, but it reminds me of a number of records by local bands that never really went anywhere: the production isn't so great, the songs aren't all quite there yet, and they should never have let the bass player sing on that one track. But it's quirky and odd, and clearly a labor of love by a talented amateur, and - despite what Harlan Ellison thinks - it's evidence that "not very good" can be worthwhile in its own right, if it's done with care.

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* Why yes, I did enjoy Major League when I was a kid.

Arsenic and Axes: Blood in the Parlor by Dorothy Dunbar

Blood in the Parlor by Dorothy Dunbar (1964)

While half the fun of the Zombie Summer Reading Program is finding the weird books yourself, when the recommendation comes from Donna Tartt, it's worth following up on. A recent Village Voice feature asked writers to list their favorite obscure books, and while there were many fine contributions, Tartt's caught my eye:

My mother has had this book since I was a little girl, but no one else I know has ever heard of it, and it's almost impossible to find. Each of the 12 stories is an account of a 19th-century murder told with a light, macabre sense of humor. I'd love to see it back in print with illustrations by Edward Gorey.

I was intrigued, and delighted to find a very ratty copy available at the Los Angeles Public Library.

Like the inimitable Edmund Lester Pearson, Dunbar has a very particular vision of what makes a "good murder." Weary of "I'll-blow-your-guts-out" detective stories and 20th century crime in general, Dunbar longs for the evildoers of a more gracious age, a time when murderers were more likely to employ an axe or a bottle of chloroform than a revolver. But the 19th century crimes she chooses to write about interest her because of their distinctive Victorian quality. Dunbar writes, "In most Victorian murders, murder is the act of removing an ugly fact to maintain a pleasant fiction, the grim reality of a dead body, or bodies, contradicting the fantasy of high-flown or obscure motives."

Medical students are likely criminals, as evidenced by the tale of Scott Jackson, a Cincinnati dental student who dispatched his inconveniently pregnant mistress, saving her head for his own research, or by Theodore Durrant, a monstrous medical student/church librarian who seduced pretty young women and stashed their bodies in the well-ventilated church belfry.

Though Dunbar isn't so obsessed with murderesses as Pearson, the Victorian period certainly had a number of fascinating ones, including Florence Maybrick, who may actually have been innocent, and Lydia Sherman, who certainly wasn't. And of course, no book would be complete without some discussion of Lizzie Borden, whose guilt Dunbar doubts not for a moment.

Blood in the Parlor was Dunbar's only book, which is a shame because she's an intelligent, wry, and very funny writer. In her account of the Lizzie Borden murders, Dunbar writes,

"There are many elements of horror in the Borden case, but one of the worst was the August fourth breakfast - mutton, sugar cakes, coffee, and mutton broth."

Her introductions to each chapter tie the cases, in grandiose terms, to classic myths, obscure historical facts, and literary and historical figures. All are giddily over the top. Combined with the book's occasional typos and factual errors, the enthusiastic result is rather endearing.

I had a great time with my first pick for the Zombie Summer Reading Program - next week, the two memoirs of that irrepressible streaker, Liz Renay!

Better Ten Innocent Men Should Suffer: Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith

Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith

Typically, the crime novel operates on the basic set of assumptions that wrongdoing has been perpetrated, and that wrongdoers must be sought out and punished to uphold a moral code, agreed upon by the state and the public. However, when the crime novel tweaks those conventions, interesting things happen.

The recent Tokyo Year Zero by David Peace deals with a detective's search for a serial killer in Tokyo in the immediate aftermath of World War II. Here, the horrific crimes of one man are blunted against the backdrop of death and devastation of a less sensational and individually targeted nature.

Child 44 explores similar ideas, played out in a very different setting - the last days of Stalin's Soviet Union in the early 1950s. Like Peace's novel, the serial killer here is loosely based on a real life murderer; however, the basic premise of that human life is valuable and criminals should be punished is challenged by an entirely different set of constructs. How can the State pursue a serial killer when the State itself is guilty of murdering thousands of its own citizens? And moreover, how can a Communist state pursue a serial killer when crimes like murder are supposed to be byproducts of capitalism?

There is no crime, so therefore, no crime has been committed.

At the beginning of the book, Leo Demidov is a high-ranking official in the MGB, the State Security force responsible for investigating suspected traitors, dissidents, and spies. Leo is unwaveringly loyal to the Party and assumes that, if he's asked to arrest someone, there must be a good reason. When the son of another MGB officer turns up mutilated with soil stuffed in his mouth, Leo is sent to convince the family to keep quiet about their suspicion that it was murder.

Leo's not cruel and he takes no pleasure in the brutality of his job -- he just knows how the system works, and what happens to people who make too much noise, people who get arrested.

Though this murder and others like it are central to the story, Leo initially has very little to do with them. The first half of the book is actually devoted to the series of events leading to Leo's loss of faith in his government and his subsequent fall from the Party's grace. It's an unusual choice, but Smith isn't simply treading water here in the build-up to the murder investigation. This section of the book does an excellent job of establishing the culture of paranoia and perpetual fear, as well as shattering Leo's assumptions about nearly every aspect of his life, including his marriage.

Once Leo is in a position to begin investigating the series of murders, all children, all mutilated with soil stuffed in their mouths, the book becomes more of a straightforward thriller. However, because of circumstances I won't spoil here, the stakes are very high and the reading experience very, very tense.

There's been a tremendous amount of enthusiasm and hype about Smith's Child 44, all of it deserved. There's a cinematic quality to the story (in fact, the rights have already been purchased by Ridley Scott, with Richard Price set to write the adaptation), but it never reads like a screenplay. The writing is complex, powerful, and sometimes devastating. It's a fascinating premise for a crime thriller, and Smith delivers on every bit of the story's promise.

A Q&A with American Eve Author Paula Uruburu

Earlier this week, I reviewed Paula Uruburu's American Eve, and it knocked my socks off.

The story of America's first supermodel, Evelyn Nesbit, her tragic relationships with architect Stanford White and coal heir Harry Kendall Thaw, and the brutal crime that thrust her into the public eye in a way her photographs never had would appeal to any true crime fan or history buff. However, Uruburu's account digs beneath the sensation and spectacle to uncover much more -- not only the circumstances leading up to the 1906 murder, but also a critical side of the story that's previously gone untold -- Evelyn's.

Uruburu, an English professor at Hofstra University, was kind enough to answer a few questions about the book, and on top of that, she also sent some wonderful images that didn't make it into American Eve (including one of Harry Thaw's very scary mother). Enjoy!

Even though the events of American Eve took place over 100 years ago, your narrative has a very intimate, in-the-moment feel -- the scenes where you describe Stanford White's parties for Evelyn come immediately to mind. Was there a moment in your research when you began to understand the figures in this story on a deeper level, and if so, what brought it about?

Ghosts can be very instructive if one pays attention. It also helps to live so close to Manhattan where so much of the story takes place and have a passion for true crime and -- I would hope -- a sensitivity to gender issues and what I call in the book “the currencies of power” that saturate and define American culture – power, money, sex, beauty and celebrity. After spending ten years with Evelyn’s own writing in memoirs and letters, tons of contemporary newspaper accounts and subsequent articles, family reminiscences, the original trial transcripts (which had not been seen in 100 years) I really did begin to live in the period and put Evelyn into the larger cultural context she herself could not see while in the moment.

It also helps that as an English professor with a specialization in the Gilded Age and turn of the century literature and culture, I already had an intimacy with the language of the times, the social milieu, etc. I have a background as well in art history and theater, which also helped me write about a world I felt I knew on a deeper level and wanted to recreate as faithfully as possible. I eventually got to a point where I wanted a steak and glass of champagne from Delmonicos.

How did you track down the photographs, postcards, and ephemera used in the book, and of these, what was your most exciting find?

I had to become what I call a stealth detective, often entering into dark dusty places off the beaten track (and as I say in my notes, in a pre-Ebay, pre-internet world). My research required a lot of traveling to libraries, historical societies, archives, various sub-cultures of different kinds of collectors, to finding people who knew Evelyn, even to the former asylum Harry was in which is now a correctional facility in upstate New York. I have a great deal more material than is even evident in the book, and almost think I need to write a book about the experience of writing American Eve (think Flaubert’s Parrot or the film Adaptation).

My most exciting find early on was the original first trial transcript (all 6000 pages) which the generous grandson of the original judge in the case let me copy. The other exciting find has to be uncovering the private collector who had 400+ letters that Evelyn wrote. He also generously let me use them as source material for the book. Just seeing her own handwriting, her incredible wit and sense of humor in these letters helped me continue when I realized she never gave in to the idea of being a victim. They made me want to reveal the human being behind the myth and the Mona Lisa smile.

I couldn't believe how quickly public sentiment turned against Stanford White during Harry Thaw's trial, especially considering how unsympathetic a figure Thaw was. Of course, White wasn't around to defend himself, but why do you think the people chose to stand behind a madman who brutalized chorus girls and was shunned by most of the upper crust?

“Timing is everything” as they say -- and it is also the reason why I think the book is incredibly relevant today -- tragically and depressingly so. Not only did new technology make it possible for the Thaws to wage a media war in Harry’s defense, led by the indomitable Mother Thaw and her dead husband’s millions, but it was a culture in crisis. The so-called new Century of Progress was ripe for change and class wars -- and social/culture clashes were inevitable. The Thaws, with their well-paid alienists and spin-doctors, created a media blitz (using everything at their disposal including sheet music, postcards, pulp-type accounts, film, etc.) that the old-money old guard would not have sullied themselves with -– and as you said, Stanford White wasn’t around to defend himself. Those who might have tried to defend him high-tailed it out of town to avoid any guilt by association.

In addition, the invention of the female force of reporters that I describe in the book (the sob sisters) saw an opportunity in Evelyn’s pathetic tale to break into the newspaper business, playing initially on the melodramatic, almost operatic aspects of a battle of the sexes being played out in public for the first time. It took a while for people to realize that Harry was not the knight in shining armor but rather something much, much darker and that White was not the wholesale villain the Thaws wanted to promote to save Harry from the electric chair.

You mention in the acknowledgments that Evelyn's surviving family members were very supportive in helping you with this project. What were their thoughts when you first approached them, and what do they think of the book, now that it's finished?

When I contacted the person I thought was Evelyn’s son, Russell, it turned out to be Evelyn’s grandson, also named Russell (his father had passed away a decade before). He was initially reluctant to talk to me, having been burned in the past by unscrupulous collectors and “just plain kooks” every time Evelyn resurfaced in the popular culture (first in Doctorow’s Ragtime and again in the 1981 film –- he was too young to remember much about the time when The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing came out starring Joan Collins as Evelyn).

But I eventually gained his trust (it helps to be sincere and have credentials as a university professor) and he then invited me to visit, to look through family artifacts, home movies, photos, etc., and to talk to his mother, whom Evelyn lived with for twenty plus years. I was of course very anxious about the family’s reaction but am happy to say they appreciated it on several levels —- in fact Russell really liked it (including the writing style), saying that at first it was very weird, looking over my shoulder into his own family’s history and his grandma’s life and the “wicked, wicked” circumstances that always threatened to engulf her. He also thanked me for showing how she was the victim of powerful men and social forces and not the vixen she has been made out to be historically. It was extremely rewarding and quite a relief.

American Eve: Evelyn Nesbit, Stanford White, the Birth of the "It" Girl, and the Crime of the Century, Riverhead, May 2008

Also, American Eve is on YouTube -- more great images from the book.

Scandal in the Garden: American Eve by Paula Uruburu

American Eve: Evelyn Nesbit, Stanford White, the Birth of the 'It' Girl, and the Crime of the Century by Paula Uruburu

During her brief tenure as the most beautiful, enigmatic, and desirable woman in America, Evelyn Nesbit would be called "the modern Helen," "a fresh and fascinating theatrical find," and "the little Sphinx." But within the space of a few years, the press had given her dramatically different names -- "the lethal beauty," "the woman whose beauty caused death and ruin," and most famously, "the cause of it all."

The story is now a touchstone in the annals of true crime. In the rooftop theater at Madison Square Garden on June 25, 1906, Pittsburgh coal heir Harry Kendall Thaw approached architect Stanford White and shot him twice in the head in front of hundreds of witnesses. "The cause of it all" was Thaw's wife, Nesbit, who had been White's underage mistress during her days as a model and chorus girl (between the ages of roughly 14 and 20), and had been ushered into that role after White raped her. Thaw's counsel claimed he was driven mad by learning of White's attack on his bride, and Evelyn's harrowing testimony saved her husband from the electric chair.

However, Thaw was mad long before he clapped eyes on Evelyn Nesbit. He was prone to laugh at inappropriate moments, and often drifted into baby talk. He was a staunch supporter of morality laws, and often wrote letters to Anthony Comstock; however, Thaw also enjoyed luring aspiring actresses and young boys into hotel rooms where he beat them with dog whips, bound them, and in at least one case, scalded them in the bathtub -- which is how he earned the nickname of "Bathtub Harry." His improprieties were legion, but as Harry was possessed of both family fortunes, and an indulgent mother who would pay off any battered chorus girls who threatened to bring charges, Harry Kendall Thaw walked free.

It's a story so meaty that it's difficult to break away from the facts of the case and the circumstances that brought them about to discuss what Uruburu accomplishes in her telling of it.

And that bears discussion, because it's a masterful telling.

Previous accounts of the murder have focused on Thaw and White, leaving Nesbit as a child vixen able to whip men into feats of frenzy without opening her mouth. First and foremost, Uruburu's account gives Nesbit a voice and a face more substantial than the heavy-lidded nymphet with the Mona Lisa smile that we see in her portraits. To do so, Uruburu relies heavily on Nesbit's two memoirs, but she does so with meticulous care and responsibility.

Her patience in sifting through variously unreliable and sensational accounts in the press and in Nesbit and Thaw's memoirs uncovers credible explanations for Nesbit's sometimes puzzling actions -- why she became White's mistress after he raped her, why she married "Mad Harry" when she knew him to be unstable and violent, and why she provided the testimony that saved his life.

She also shows how a crime that was clearly the story of two privileged men with sick, well-concealed perversions somehow came to rest on the shoulders of a young model who had been abused by both men.

Uruburu's writing style is also a marvel, invoking the purple prose of the era alongside the fictional icons that would figure heavily into Nesbit's photographic studies and her life -- Bluebeard, Little Red Riding Hood, Persephone, and Alice in Wonderland, to name a few. Of the affair that developed between Nesbit and White, Uruburu writes,

"In the months following Evelyn's Dionysian initiation, Stanny behaved as if he had to possess her as completely as humanly possible... Like the perfect champagne grape, he had picked her at the sweetest moment of her development, when she would be at her most deliciously erotic, susceptible to decadence, but without a sexual history and no equipment for passing sour judgments."

In the months leading up to the book's publication, Uruburu has frequently been called upon to provide commentary on celebrity stories involving the likes of Miley Cyrus, Lindsay Lohan, and Britney Spears, and it's not surprising. In her memoirs, even Evelyn Nesbit would write, "I do not know that to be brought into the public eye so young is the happiest of experiences."

Snakes and Snails and Femme Fatales: In Praise of Lies by Patricia Melo

In Praise of Lies by Patricia Melo

Recently, one of my colleagues did a program at LAPL about mystery novels from South and Latin America. I picked up a few books, but the one that Jim put into my hands personally was In Praise of Lies, a story of romantic intrigue, criminal schemes, and spousal homicide that's every bit as nasty as it is funny.

The narrator, Jose Guber, is a novelist who churns out pulp crime novels on two week deadlines. In an effort to sneak a little bit of intellectual betterment into his unsuspecting readers, Guber lifts his plots from the likes of Poe, Camus, and Dostoevsky. One of my favorite pieces of business in the book is the correspondence between Guber and his editor. In one of these exchanges, Guber sends a proposal that's basically Crime and Punishment, and the editor replies, "How are we going to arouse the spirit of revenge in readers by killing some mangy, undesirable old woman? When an old woman like that dies, people cheer."

The editor is also fond of invoking Van Dine's "20 Rules for Writing Detective Stories".

But enough about the nice touches - let's get to the murder.

Guber decides that he'd like to write a novel in which the murderer uses snake venom to kill his victims, and seeks out an expert for help. Enter Melissa, a herpetologist with a carefully selected collection of rare, deadly, and in some cases, illegally obtained snakes. She and Guber begin a steamy affair almost immediately, complicated by Melissa's marriage.

She hates her husband, wants him dead, and pressures Guber to help murder him so they can be together. She hatches an elaborate plan inspired by Guber's snake venom story, and Guber goes along with her, half-transfixed and half-terrified. Hasn't Guber read enough James M. Cain to realize these things never turn out well?

And it doesn't, though not in the ways you'd expect.

Melo's writing is clever and sharp, and while she relies on well-worn tropes from classic crime fiction, she bends these conventions to her own very surprising ends. In Praise of Lies is a quick read, less than 200 pages, but you'll savor every one of them.

Escape from East Egg: The Madeline Dare Series by Cornelia Read

A Field of Darkness (2006)
The Crazy School (2008)

Madeline Dare comes from a family whose money "is so old there's none left." However, since her debutante days, she's traded in WASP-y breeding for a working class husband and a home in the decidedly unglamorous Syracuse. She's happy with the former, less so with the latter.

The first book, A Field of Darkness begins when Madeline's beloved, moneyed cousin, Lapthorne Townsend, is linked to a decades-old double murder. She decides to sniff out the evidence before ratting out a family member, and quickly finds herself in over her head. There are plenty of people in Syracuse who'd rather keep the case buried, and Madeline's discoveries prove dangerous, and sometimes fatal, to the people who help with her sleuthing.

Though the prose sometimes gets a little rangy and ponderous, Read's first novel introduces a snarky, sharp heroine made of surprisingly tough stuff. Add to that some really nice observations about how the very rich are different from you and me, and a plot that consistently ventures into the unexpected, and I was eager to see what the lovely Mrs. Dare would get up to next.

In The Crazy School, Madeline and her husband, Dean, have left Syracuse in the wake of events from the previous book, and Madeline is working off her survivor's guilt by teaching at a school for disturbed teenagers.

The school is run by the creepy, yet charismatic David Santangelo, who insists that students and staff alike submit to group and individual therapy and a bevy of odd restrictions -- no caffeine, no use of the "f" word (Santangelo lets them cuss a blue streak in class, but believes the word "fuck" is "fundamentally linked to violence against women").

Madeline cares deeply about her students, but finds herself stymied by colleagues who seem to have drunk the proverbial Kool-Aid, and are only marginally more stable than their charges.

Then a student confides in Madeline about his pregnant girlfriend, Fay. Fay is days away from turning 18, and then the two of them can leave the school and try to start a life together -- but only if their secret stays safe. Madeline agrees to help them, but on the night of Fay's birthday, the couple is found dead in what initially appears to be a suicide pact. However, Madeline thinks otherwise and goes to the police with her suspicions, only to be arrested for the murders.

When she's released on insufficient evidence, Madeline sets out to clear her name and find the real killer, despite the advice of her well-heeled attorney (wealthy connections sometimes have their advantages). With the help of a few colleagues and students, none of whom she's entirely sure she can trust, Madeline begins to dig up dirt on the school, and discovers enough hidden agendas and ugly secrets to fill a truck -- but everything depends on which version of the story is true.

Read does an excellent job of casting suspicion on all of the book's supporting characters, which is especially effective since Madeline isn't the most circumspect of crime heroines. Each time she confides in a colleague or a student, you'll be cringing with worry over which of them will use the information to stab her in the back.

I was introduced to Read's work through her story, "Hungry Enough" in the recent noir collection A Hell of a Woman, a nasty little piece of intrigue about Hollywood wives. In the Madeline Dare books, Read's gift for pithy dialogue, edgy plots, and suspenseful twists can stretch out and get comfy -- although no promises that readers will be. Very tense stuff.

If you like amateur sleuth novels, but prefer them out of the rose garden and into the alley, this book is for you.

Methadone!

Wire withdrawal, day 2: The shakes aren't so bad, and there's less bugs crawling around under my skin than there were last night, so that's good. On the other hand, I'm still only answering to "Bodie" or maybe "Bunk" and this morning I set up surveillance on one of the cats, whom I suspect is holding.

But what's this? Over at The House Next Door, a list of Wire-related and Wire-esque books for those who, like me, are jonesing something fierce in the wake of our beloved show's cancellation?

Score!

The New Pull List of Maturity (and Crime)

A funny thing happened when we got home last night after our weekly trip to the Golden Apple. First, staring at the stack of books, I realized that - with the exception of the new Buffy* - our entire haul this week was made up of crime books. Looking at our comics shelf, I then realized that "capes and tights" books make up the smallest chunk by far of our monthly buys.

Of course, genre is a tricky thing: does a book like Powers count as a crime-book-with-superheroes or a superhero-book-in-police-procedural-tights? (With Powers, I settled on the former; Peter David's X-Factor, a mash-up of noir detective with Marvel mutants, I would peg as the latter, if only because it gets hijacked every so often for company crossover slugfests.)

I have to admit I was a little surprised at first, and maybe a little saddened: it was, after all, Spidey, the X-Men, and (sigh) the West Coast Avengers that got me hooked on the medium. But on my recent trip home I had the occasion to haul a box or two of comics out of the attic and flip through them, and it pretty much confirmed the conventional wisdom that the early 90s were not such a great time for spandex and eye-beams, at least where the big two were concerned.

But then I looked down at the stack of floppies we had brought home and snapped out my nostalgia-funk immediately: there may not be much in the superhero genre that's doing it for me these days, but we're in the middle of an excellent crime comics boom-let.

So coming soon: crime comics reviews galore, where we'll be checking in with some old favorites and checking out some new obsessions.

Now if y'all will excuse me, I've got to track down this mope and make with the chin music until he canaries. . .

. . .oh, who am I kidding? I've got to get back to coding old newspaper editorials.

-------------------------

* As regards a certain surprising (if not wholly unexpected) plot twist: I can't resist the easy joke. To wit: "I'll be in my bunk."

A Q&A with Investigative Journalist and Author M. William Phelps

If Looks Could Kill: Money, Marriage, Adultery and... Murder by M. William Phelps

On June 16, 2001, a motorcyclist drove up to Jeff Zack's car, parked outside of BJ's Wholesale Club in Akron, Ohio, and shot him in the face. Although the shooting took place in broad daylight and in view of many witnesses, police were unable to make an arrest for nearly a year. Zack led a messy life, and had more than a few enemies. However, when the circumstances surrounding Zack's death began to unravel, police discovered a trail of deception, manipulation, and betrayal.

Zack had been involved in a long-term affair with wealthy Akron socialite Cindy Rohr-George, the wife of a restaurant owner and mother of seven. George was eventually arrested for conspiring to kill Zack with John Zaffino, also her lover. However, the wild testimony that emerged during the trial, and its shocking outcome still have Akron reeling.

M. William Phelps, investigative journalist and author of Murder in the Heartland and Lethal Guardian, conducted over 100 interviews and studied police reports connected with the case. In If Looks Could Kill, he cuts through the sensationalized myths surrounding the case -- gun smuggling, drug dealing, and domestic abuse, for starters -- to discover the truth.

Phelps was kind enough to chat with me via email about his research for the book, upcoming projects, and the dangers of cybersleuthing. The insights he shares about the case, and about everything else, are incredibly interesting.

This is a case where what is known, or what is thought to be known, has been constantly changing since Jeff Zack's murder, nearly seven years ago. At what point did you begin to follow the story, and what in particular interested you about it?

Actually, the facts have stayed pretty much the same throughout. It’s the interpretation of them through the media and the Georges which beckons confusion for everyone. But the case itself has never changed. This was a classic whodunit.

In my author’s note, I talk about how I became involved. Without giving it all away: I was on an Ohio radio show promoting Murder in the Heartland in 2006 when this story—and a very important source—literally dropped into my lap. (There’s always someone out there that wants to get the truth out!) What interested me about this story at that early stage was the fact that when you look at it, you’d think the logical way for this to unfold would have been: Cindy George, beautiful wife of a wealthy (much older) restaurateur, mother of seven kids, becomes bored with her life, finds a lover and together they murder the husband and take off with his money. That is a classic true crime plot (something Ann Rule, in other words, would be all over).

But that’s not what happens here, as you know. The story unfolds quite a bit differently from the norm. This hooked me right away. I am always looking for classic cases with a special twist that changes the entire dynamic of everything and everyone involved. And let’s be honest: whenever you have good looking rich people in a suburban setting, adultery, steamy sex, drugs, guns, murder and two trials, you’ve got one heck of a true crime case that is very marketable. And what most budding authors in this genre don’t understand is, marketing is a major part of choosing cases (which is another conversation all together, maybe for another time).

Regardless of her guilt or innocence, I'm amazed that George's family members remained so loyal to her throughout the trial, her imprisonment, etc. In your research, what kind of person did you find Cindy Rohr-George to be?

A master manipulator. Someone who understands and even studies others’ weaknesses to use that knowledge to her advantage. Those pregnancies of Cindy’s where she was bedridden taught her a valuable lesson for later on: people who love you will do anything for you if they believe you’re sick and/or hurting.

Cindy was able to draw on the sympathy of those around her and use that to her advantage for whatever purpose she needed. Remember, Cindy was from a just below middle class family in North Canton, a neighborhood of rather post-World War II cookie-cutter homes. From early on, because she was so stunningly gorgeous (although this is certainly not the case now), things started to come to Cindy. As she grew, she wanted more and more and more. Look at it this way: the garage attached to the house Cindy lives in with Ed George and her seven children outside Akron is bigger than the house she grew up in.

The George family are devout Catholics. All the kids went to Catholic schools. They all went to Mass regularly. They love her. They believe in her. They stuck by her—and still do—because that is what Jesus Christ would want them to do. And again, this divine devotion is something Cindy used for her own selfish needs.

How did the people of Akron respond to the George and Zack families during all of this? How did people seem to feel about the outcome of the trials?

People are devastated that Cindy got out of prison and can never be tried again. They feel her wealth bought her a get out of jail free card. Akron has a reputation for being a “money can buy you happiness” city of wealth and status. There’s always been some sort of controversy brewing in town. I spent a week there while I was in Ohio researching If Looks Could Kill and experienced it myself. There’s an “us against them” feeling in town: Us being the working class, Them being the rich. Moreover, Ed George knows a lot of people. He has been in the restaurant/cabaret business for decades. When you know that many people, things come a bit easier to you. The world you live in treats you differently.

The Zack family left the area. Now that is a family I feel for. Bonnie Zack and Jeff’s son and Jeff’s family in Arizona really didn’t ask for any of this. They were drawn into a mess of a life Jeff created. As a cautionary tale, this case proves—if nothing else—how infidelity in a marriage can truly cause a ripple effect that is, in many ways, being felt years after the actual affair ended.

Also, how did they respond to you when you began your research - how willing were they to discuss Zack's murder?

It’s the same with every book. You have those who will talk and those who absolutely won’t. Then you have those who sit on the fence and watch, listen, and ultimately come to you when they feel you’re doing a decent enough job and your only goal is to tell the truth.

The Georges, of course, wouldn’t talk to me. As I point out in the book, the Georges carefully picked who they spoke to—and wouldn’t speak to anyone until they needed a certain “story” to get out into the press—and timed those interviews with pivotal moments in Cindy’s case. Cindy gave one newspaper her only face-to-face interview, where she spewed all sorts of rhetoric that she had never said before.

I had a lot of anonymous sources come forward during the process and give me some solid information. But let me say this: the documents I was able to obtain—which no one beyond key law enforcement has yet to see—tell quite the story, and truly show who is lying and who is telling the truth, not to mention how far the Akron PD took this investigation. The Akron PD got pretty beat up during the trials. The Akron PD Crimes Against Persons Unit, however, did one of the most thorough jobs I have ever seen in a murder investigation. They left no stone unturned. And the truth is, whenever they turned a stone over, Cindy’s face was right there staring back up at them.

You had mentioned in an email to me something about Iranian gun smugglers potentially being involved in this story. You see, that was a tale put out there. I got to the bottom of it and found it to be a lie. Wait until you see the credibility of the person who made this accusation. You won’t believe it. Jeff Zack was a lot of things and not a very nice person. But he was not a gun smuggler or drug dealer. Nor is there any evidence that Jeff Zack ever abused Cindy George, as she now claims.

Do you think the book is closed on the Cindy Rohr-George and John Zaffino cases?

Yes. From Cindy’s position it’s a done deal.

Although, I do think John Zaffino will, someday, come forward and tell all he knows. I spoke to John. I detail that correspondence in the beginning of the book. John is a funny guy. Brute of a man. Drunkard. All those things you’d expect a killer of his caliber to be. I tell his complete story—which is very interesting. Makes you wonder how Cindy ever ended up with John and, more important, why. Where they meet, for instance, is as telling as a phone conversation they have one night as John is standing in the Cuyahoga Falls National Park woods with a gun waiting to kill Jeff Zack.

Many of your books, this one included, have taken on very recent criminal cases as their subjects. However, you have a book on the American spy Nathan Hale coming out, and I read on your website that you're working on two other Revolutionary War-era subjects. That's quite a departure - could you talk a little about your interests here?

I also co-wrote a book with Thomas Craughwell titled Failures of the Presidents (it’ll be out on September 1). I don’t consider my subject choices as much of a departure as others might. When you write books for a living you need to focus on a lot of different aspects of the publishing business. You have to view your work as a job, and pay attention to what the market demands. For me, I follow my heart and see if that fits into what publishing is looking for at the time. I consider myself a nonfiction book author and journalist. Period. If someone wants to label me a true crime author, that’s fine. I don’t mind. But I just follow my heart and listen to what my business manager, Peter Miller, tells me. Peter is my coach. We talk about ideas and he advises me on which way to go.

I approached Nathan Hale the way I approach any other project: studying documents and getting the story into my head and then going out and finding other “sources” to fill in the gaps. Whether we’re talking about a police report or a journal from 275 years ago, it really makes no difference when you approach it as a storyteller and writer.

There has not been a biography of Nathan Hale written for some eighty years, so my book will be the first “true” biography of an American icon we have all heard of, but know very little about.

I am interested in whatever moves me. I like to tell people that my literary calling is American history. But I also write about contemporary true crimes cases (my day job, if you will). Some authors choose to teach at colleges and write books in their spare time. I choose to write all day (and night, lately). To me, one is not more important than the other; but all of us have our own vision of who we want to be, and we try to live that out in what we do. I am so grateful that I am able to get up every morning and do this for a living. I never forget that. I thank God for that blessing every day and for also having so many loyal readers. I worked hard, sure. But I’m also very lucky and very fortunate to be able to do this. And I never forget that.

I'm also curious, what do you like about the process of historic research versus investigative journalism? What challenges do you find with each?

The two are interconnected. I think “investigative journalism” sometimes is viewed as some sort of mysterious, intriguing job we do while wearing a trench coat, fedora and sunglasses, sneaking around, meeting people in back alleys. I’ve done my share of digging through Dumpsters and meeting people secretly, etc. But a lot of this is reading documents and putting the pieces of a puzzle together via interviews. The other part is getting your hands on documents others haven’t seen. For example, in the Cindy George case, I was able to get hold of hundreds of pages of documents no one outside law enforcement had ever seen. This changed to the entire scope of my book.

The challenges I face are the same: getting people to help. If people aren’t willing to open up and lend a hand, you’re stuck.

The other part of this is staying away from the Internet. Too many people today think that investigative journalism is about searching the Internet for Websites and old MySpace pages and emails and things left behind in Cyberspace. And granted, some of that may help. True investigative journalism is about picking up the phone and calling people and tracking down documents and sources and filing F.O.I.A.s until you just cannot stand to write another one. Cybersluething and investigative journalism are two totally different things and shouldn’t be confused.

One of the worst things you can do for a story is rely on what cyberspace provides. I cannot stress this enough in today’s Internet world of instant information. I would suggest, for anyone looking to grasp a further understanding of what I mean, that you read James B. Stewart’s book, Follow the Story. I don’t know him, by the way. So I’m not shilling for a friend. But in that book, you’ll notice that the Internet is not even discussed as a serious investigating tool for a working journalist. We have to watch out with what’s happening right now. Information is too interchangeable and stepped on. You do not know what you’re getting off the Internet. I’ve gotten hard copies of magazine and/or newspaper stories and matched them up to their Internet counterparts and noticed that they’ve been changed or added to or even edited. That scares me. Moreover, how can we rely on a MySpace page as fact? Anyone can publish anything about anyone. There’s no fact-checking process involved with this sort of research—which is really terrifying from a true journalist’s point of view.

IF LOOKS COULD KILL is being released today. For more information, visit M. William Phelp's website.

A Kindred Spirit: Edmund Lester Pearson

Thanks to Laura James at CLEWS, whose enthusiastic words on librarian and true crime pioneer Edmund Lester Pearson led me to track down Studies in Murder and Masterpieces of Murder: An Edmund Pearson True Crime Reader.

Just a few stories in, and I already feel like I'm having fireside chats with a very dear, very morbid old friend.

You see, as my colleague, Greg, and I were tracking down "crimes of the heart" stories for our Valentine's Day-themed true crime program at LAPL, we had an interesting conversation about what makes a "good murder." We had no trouble finding stories that fit the bill -- Angelenos have been killing their loved ones since the city was founded.

The challenge was to find the stories that were unusual without being outright downers, or otherwise too grisly to discuss over lunch. There had to be some zaniness, some audacity, and at the risk of sounding callous, even some humor to them.

If a woman stabs her husband, it's a tragedy. If a woman stabs her husband, then claims he sustained the wound while making himself a ham sandwich, it's a tragedy, and something else as well. Something that, as Pearson might say, appeals to "the collector" of such stories.

In "What Makes a Good Murder?" Pearson explains, "The good murder, the really desirable performance, beloved by the collector is committed not by an habitual criminal but by someone of blameless life... Interesting, because unaccountable." The murder that is carefully planned and carried out for purposes of monetary or other gain resonate more than the stick-up turned tragic or the crime committed in the heat of the moment "because it is the most wicked."

Pearson's opinionated style may put some off -- he's cynical of insanity pleas, bullish on the death penalty, and openly fascinated with murderesses. However, he has all the goods that characterize the best true crime writers -- a sense of justice, a researcher's whimsical curiosity, a storyteller's instinct, and most importantly, a boundless desire to get to the bottom of things.

Some may find this kind of fascination distasteful, but to them I put Pearson's words, "Eight out of ten people are interested in murder, and of the two, one is a pretender."

As one of the eight, I can't wait to read more.

Broads, Dames and Twists No More: A Hell of a Woman: An Anthology of Female Noir

A Hell of a Woman: An Anthology of Female Noir, edited by Megan Abbott

If there's one thing in this world that I'm sure of, it's that any project with Megan Abbott's name on it may as well be stamped with the damn Good Housekeeping Seal. Well, maybe -- if that Seal was sepia-toned and smeared with a few bloody fingerprints, and if the woman throwing it into her shopping cart had dark circles under her eyes, and a few darker secrets behind them.

The noir world is scattered with the corpses of pretty young things, femme fatales, and brassy, boozy hellcats, mostly portrayed in thin, played-out sketches, mostly by men. Abbott's work (Die a Little, The Song Is You, Queenpin) has consistently turned these stock noir caricatures on their heads, and the exceptional work collected in A Hell of a Woman does that, and then some.

The section headings that situate the collection's 24 stories draw upon these character types ("Minxes, Shapeshifters and Hothouse Flowers," "Housewives, Madonnas and Girls Next Door," "Gold-Diggers, Hustlers and B Girls," "Working Girls, Tomboys and Girls Friday," and "Hellcats, Madwomen and Outlaws); however, if you think you know these women, you don't. The greatest joy of this collection is watching each author defy conventions of the genre, and create characters that are fresh and unique, yet quintessentially noir.

The book's contributors are a varied bunch, from critically acclaimed veterans like Sandra Scoppettone, Ken Bruen, and SJ Rozan to relative newcomers like Lisa Respers France and Sarah Weinman; however, there's nary a dud to be found. I found myself lingering over each story, and thinking about them, sometimes uneasily, as I fell asleep.

Particular standouts include "Blue Vandas" by Lynne Barrett, a terrific Hollywood whodunit about bit actresses, bigshot producers, and a lowly gardener who learns more about the seedy underbelly of show business than she'd bargained for. If you're a fan of Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, you owe it to yourself to check this one out.

"Cherish" by Alison Gaylin, the story of a mentally ill movie theatre usher and her unhinged obsession with a movie star is unforgettably disturbing, and made more so by its knockout twist of an ending.

However, the book's best plot twist comes in Donna Moore's "Bumping Uglies," about a purse snatcher who discovers a murder plot in a Prada handbag. When she decides to blackmail the purse's owner, things get delightfully nasty.

And then just when it looks like the fun is over, there's more. The book's appendix includes 36 odes to the women of noir -- actresses, characters, and authors. There are some well-known inclusions like Phyllis Dietrichson, the iciest blonde ever to hatch an insurance scheme, and Patricia Highsmith, but also some obscure and overlooked gems, such as noir writers Delores Hitchens and Helen Nielsen, both of whom I'm now eager to track down.

Busted Flush Press has a real winner in A Hell of a Woman -- it's simply one of the strongest, tightest fiction collections I've read in a very long time.

Weekend Curiosities and Wonders: B is for Bud and Beulah

Here's your bit of odd text for the weekend.

I've recently been preparing for another Los Angeles true crime program at the library focusing on historic crimes of passion. And it's hard to talk about L.A. crimes of passion without spending some time on the lurid, notorious, god-awful trial of Bud Gollum and Beulah Louise Overell, never mind the fact that the pair were acquitted and that the trial took place in Orange, not L.A., County.

It is the quintessential big nasty of love gone bad.

To sum up, on March 15, 1947, a yacht belonging to Beulah's parents exploded in the Newport Beach Harbor while the teenager and her boyfriend, Bud, sat ashore eating hamburgers. An investigation revealed that the adults were beaten to death before the explosion, and dynamite was rigged aboard the yacht. Bud and Beulah were charged with the murders (a brief, but informative summary is available here).


While the pair awaited trial in their respective prisons, they exchanged a series of sometimes steamy, mostly hysterical, melodramatic letters, which were subsequently snatched up by prosecutors and leaked to the now-defunct Los Angeles Examiner. Other L.A. papers quoted the juicy bits (e.g. "If necessary, I'll kidnap you and carry you off somewhere so that no one will ever be able to find us and there I'll make passionate and violent love to you," and "Oh my darling, oh my Pops, Popsie, darling, my beautiful, handsome, intelligent Pops. I adore you, always, eternally. Your slave, Louise"), but the Examiner actually printed images of the letters.

Well, I had to see that. So, I rolled up my sleeves, dug out the microfilm, and went to town.

I particularly admire Bud's sketch of a proposed jailbreak route, as well as his turn of phrase: "Please draw the route to your cell from the elevator. I love you, my dear. I adore you."

Unsurprisingly, the couple's love affair did not survive the trial.

In most cases involving grisly death, I refrain from making light. However, the sensational trial, and even more sensationalized news coverage it received make it hard to take seriously. Additionally, without reasonable guardians to keep a lid on her, the behavior of the teenage Beulah Louise was frequently shocking. She somehow seemed to interpret all the attention as "good" attention, and flirted shamelessly with the press and signed autographs. Other times, she had odd emotional responses, like this picture, taken while she views the site where her parents died.

A guilty party, or merely a 1947-era Britney?

I've added other selected portions of the letters on Flickr for interested parties. Honestly, if the circumstances surrounding them weren't so grim and awful, they'd fit right in at Mortified or PostSecret.

Tokyo Teen Sleuth: The Devil's Whisper by Miyuki Miyabe

The Devil's Whisper by Miyuki Miyabe

In his 16 years, Mamoru Kusaka has experienced more than his fair share of suffering. When he was 4, his father, a civil servant, embezzled 50 million yen in public funds before vanishing. Living as outcasts, Mamoru and his mother continued to live in Hirakawa waiting for Toshio to return to them.

When his mother dies of a stroke, Mamoru is sent to live with his aunt and uncle in Tokyo. However, for the first time in his life, things seem to be looking up for Mamoru. They welcome him into their family, and treat him as a son.

But then, Mamoru's uncle, a taxi driver, is charged with manslaughter when a woman runs out in front of his cab. Hoping to find a witness who can clear his uncle's name, Mamoru begins to investigate, and discovers two other strange deaths. One young woman runs off the roof of a building, while another steps in front of a train. It turns out, all three were part of a scam to sponge money off of lonely men by pretending to fall in love with them. All three were featured in a now-defunct porn magazine.

Then there are the strange phone calls, the raspy voice on the other end of the line that tells Mamoru, "Thank you for taking care of Yoku Sugano. I'm serious. Thanks for killing her. She had it coming." The man continues to contact Mamuro, making it clear that the deaths were no accident.

When Mamoru discovers that a fourth girl featured in the article is still alive, he realizes that she's in terrible danger, and sets out to find her.

The Devil's Whisper is a tremendously compelling story, like a combination of Kate Atkinson's Case Histories and The Manchurian Candidate, with a complex coming of age story seamlessly worked in. The teenage protagonist's sleuthing reminded me of a Veronica Mars plot -- high stakes and a capable, haunted hero whose youth is never used to trivialize the story's tension. And like Neptune's Lady Marlowe, solving the mystery doesn't mean happily ever after for Mamoru.

Originally published in Japan in 1989, I hope that more of Miyabe's work finds its way into English translation. However, Miyabe's terrific plots might be better served by a different translator -- my only criticism of The Devil's Whisper is that the prose is rather stiff. Still, this didn't detract from my enjoyment of the story -- Mamoru is one of the best teen protagonists I've encountered in fiction in quite some time.