An exhaustive, uninspired work of true crime.
A comprehensive entry into the mountain of media surrounding a prominent recent murder trial.
In his latest true-crime book, veteran writer Glatt turns his attention to Richard Alexander Murdaugh, the scion of a powerful South Carolina legal family. The author traces the storied dynasty back to Murdaugh’s great-great-great-grandfather, who was born in Islandton, South Carolina, in 1793. It was that ancestor’s son who became the first lawyer in the family, opening a one-man law practice in Hampton County in 1910. Glatt ably brings us through the next century, during which the Murdaugh name became synonymous with the local judicial system. He explains how “three generations of Murdaughs had served as [the region’s] solicitors (called district attorneys in all other states), turning it into a family business,” while simultaneously operating their own highly lucrative private law firm. By the time Murdaugh graduated from law school in 1994, new state laws made it illegal for solicitors to also practice civil law. Consequently, he joined the family law firm, then called PMPED, which specialized in “personal injury cases for the little man.” Murdaugh enjoyed great success and social standing until 2019, when his teenage son, Paul, drunkenly drove a boat into a bridge, killing Mallory Beach, his 19-year-old friend. In June 2021, Murdaugh found his wife and Paul shot to death at his massive hunting estate, the double murder for which he would later be convicted (though that trial is beyond the scope of this book). Later that year, Murdaugh was fired from PMPED for stealing millions of dollars of funds from his own clients. The so-called “Murdaugh Murders” have spawned a virtual cottage industry of content, from podcasts to a Netflix docuseries, and it’s hard to see what Glatt, though he capably catalogs all the relevant events, offers that’s unique. Ultimately, the narrative feels like a book-length Wikipedia article.
An exhaustive, uninspired work of true crime.Pub Date: Aug. 8, 2023
ISBN: 9781250283481
Page Count: 320
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 2, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2023
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
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
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
Welcome reading for anyone concerned with real rigged elections.
Tired of the lies about the 2020 election? Buckle up: Trump is just warming up, and his allies may be getting craftier.
“This is not a book about January 6, 2021. It is a book about January 6, 2025,” write legal scholars Lessig and Seligman. We are lucky, Lessig suggests, that John Eastman and his fellow plotters “picked the dumbest possible strategy for pursuing what we feared they were trying to accomplish”: namely, trying to convince Mike Pence that he had the constitutional authority to refuse to certify the results by which Joe Biden won the presidency. One might argue that the second dumbest strategy was to send an army of fascist goons to the Capitol to try to enforce Eastman’s argument. However, Lessig and Seligman argue, there are holes in the Constitution wide enough to drive a burning dumpster through, and they might allow an interested party to falsely claim victory in a closely contested race and win the election. The authors presume that any such gaming-the-system effort will come from MAGA Republicans, though they add that a Democrat could easily use the same tactics. Readers may need a law degree to follow some of the arguments, but others are quite accessible. One argument that Lessig has been mounting for some time, for instance, is that the winner-take-all method employed by most states for electoral votes needs to be replaced with an apportionment system so that the Electoral College count will align with the popular vote. On that score, the authors warn, the prospect of rogue electors—or more, rogue governors who control those electors—is very real, and numerous other threats could enable someone smarter than the last bunch to mount “a cataclysmic attack on our democracy.”
Welcome reading for anyone concerned with real rigged elections.Pub Date: Feb. 13, 2024
ISBN: 9780300270792
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2024
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