A fascinating and dramatic page-turner that will be a new favorite among true-crime fans.
In this depraved story of sex, deception, greed, and murder, a veteran true-crime writer offers the first definitive history of Belle Gunness (circa 1859-1908), the most prolific female serial killer in American history.
In previous books, Schechter (American Literature and Culture/Queens Coll.; Man-Eater: The Life and Legend of an American Cannibal, 2015, etc.) trained his shrewd eye for detail and predilection for horror on familiar serial killers like H.H. Holmes (Depraved, 1994) and Albert Fish (Deranged, 1998). Here, the author focuses his expert attention on Gunness, the notorious “Lady Bluebeard” who butchered at least 28 victims at her “murder farm” in La Porte, Indiana, at the beginning of the 20th century. An imposing, severe Norwegian who weighed more than 200 pounds, Gunness immigrated to America in search of a new life far away from the poverty of her youth. Driven by greed and an insatiable hunger for wealth, she used matrimonial ads in immigrant newspapers to lure suitors to her farm, where she would con them out of their money before poisoning them, brutally butchering their remains, and burying them in her hog pen. Ray Lamphere, a hired farmhand who had an affair with Gunness, was one of the only men to leave the farm alive when he was fired in 1908. Lamphere was charged with arson and quadruple murder when the Gunness home was burned down with its owner and her children inside, but the investigation of the fire revealed the true horror: the mass graveyard of Lady Bluebeard’s victims. Schechter interweaves the stories of Gunness and Lamphere with a suspenseful narrative that explores the motives and psychology of murder, the sensational portrayal of gruesome crime in the media, and the terrifying legacy they leave behind. Featuring previously undiscovered details and rich historical context, this authoritative account firmly establishes Schechter as one of America’s leading crime chroniclers.
A fascinating and dramatic page-turner that will be a new favorite among true-crime fans.Pub Date: April 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4778-0895-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Little A
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
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
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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