by Greg King & Penny Wilson ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 20, 2022
An absorbing, psychological work of historical true crime.
King and Wilson team up again, this time to chronicle the notorious 1924 murder case dubbed the “crime of the century.”
On May 21, 1924, Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, two wealthy University of Chicago students, picked up their neighbor, 14-year-old Bobby Frank, while he was walking home from school. They proceeded to bind, gag, and bludgeon him to death and demand a ransom from his parents. Although meticulously planned over months—they wanted “to see if they could commit the perfect crime as if it was some childish game pitting their wits against the police”—their plan soon unraveled when Frank’s body was found in a nearby forest where Leopold frequently went birding. Further incriminating details included bloodstains in a rented car, the typewriter on which the ransom letter was likely composed, and bottles of ether and strychnine and two loaded guns at the Leopold house. The authors’ meticulous research is apparent throughout this thrilling narrative, as they reveal crucial aspects of the boys’ lives and families, especially their codependent relationship and interests in grim Nietzschean philosophy, sadism, and other dark subjects. Observers attributed the crime to a variety of factors, including the “corrupting modern influences” of the Roaring ’20s; “perversion,” which was “the common and unmistakable code for homosexuality”; or the idea that the perpetrators had strayed from their Jewish roots. The authors argue that Leopold was the actual murderer. “Individually, Richard and Nathan were damaged but probably not dangerous,” they write. “It was their coming together that proved deadly.” Clarence Darrow took up the case in order to argue against the death penalty. The defendants pled guilty to avoid a jury trial, although Darrow did enlist psychiatrists to suggest that the pair were “mentally diseased” rather than insane or evil. This defense brought another massive wave of media frenzy, which the authors capture in colorful detail.
An absorbing, psychological work of historical true crime.Pub Date: Sept. 20, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-250-27266-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: July 25, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2022
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by Greg King & Penny Wilson
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by Greg King ; Penny Wilson
by David Grann ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 18, 2017
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
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Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorker staff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
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BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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by Elie Wiesel ; illustrated by Mark Podwal
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by Elie Wiesel ; translated by Marion Wiesel
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