Burleigh’s propulsive narrative and the many unsettling aspects of the case make this a standout among recent true-crime...
Powerful assessment of a tragic crime and its disastrous aftermath.
The 2007 murder of British student Meredith Kercher in the university town of Perugia, Italy, at first seemed scandalously comprehensible: The victim’s amoral American housemate, Amanda Knox, bewitched two Italian men into a “sex game” gone bad. Journalist and Elle contributing editor Burleigh (Unholy Business: A True Tale of Faith, Greed, and Forgery in the Holy Land, 2008, etc.) argues that Knox and her equally naive boyfriend became unwitting scapegoats to a fumbled investigation and a volatile mix of Italian gender issues and local mores (she adeptly portrays Perugia as a gritty, conservative region with a tangled history). Although authorities quickly convicted Rudy Guede, a troubled local, they then successfully prosecuted Knox despite a near-total lack of credible evidence, other than her strange outbursts and writings. “The scenario presented by the prosecution was not very plausible,” writes the author. “The two students did not behave like guilty people…[but] were guilty of callous, blithe, and stupid behavior.” It was this that damned them from the Italian perspective, but Burleigh establishes that Knox’s adolescent self-indulgence was both typically American and reactive to a seamy European hedonism that is both moralistically condemned and economically tolerated. The author writes in a colorful, amped-up style that’s also thoughtful and detail-oriented, capturing how this cross-cultural milieu spawned a murder case in which all involved—the Italian authorities, the feckless youngsters, the media—look awful. Burleigh establishes much background information, allowing her to plausibly indict a “labyrinthine judicial bureaucracy lacking any official public face or any rules of transparency.” She notes that in Italy, the police often sue defendants for slander, and “defense witnesses…are not sworn in, and they are presumed to be lying.” Ultimately, she argues, Knox simply made a more fascinating villain than Guede, despite his burglaries and damning forensic evidence. Her devastating conclusion shows how actual physical evidence supports Knox’s alibi and suggests that the disturbed Guede acted alone.
Burleigh’s propulsive narrative and the many unsettling aspects of the case make this a standout among recent true-crime titles.Pub Date: Aug. 2, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-307-58858-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Broadway
Review Posted Online: July 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2011
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
"There's got to be something wrong with somebody who'd do a thing like that." This is Perry Edward Smith, talking about himself. "Deal me out, baby...I'm a normal." This is Richard Eugene Hickock, talking about himself. They're as sick a pair as Leopold and Loeb and together they killed a mother, a father, a pretty 17-year-old and her brother, none of whom they'd seen before, in cold blood. A couple of days before they had bought a 100 foot rope to garrote them—enough for ten people if necessary. This small pogrom took place in Holcomb, Kansas, a lonesome town on a flat, limitless landscape: a depot, a store, a cafe, two filling stations, 270 inhabitants. The natives refer to it as "out there." It occurred in 1959 and Capote has spent five years, almost all of the time which has since elapsed, in following up this crime which made no sense, had no motive, left few clues—just a footprint and a remembered conversation. Capote's alternating dossier Shifts from the victims, the Clutter family, to the boy who had loved Nancy Clutter, and her best friend, to the neighbors, and to the recently paroled perpetrators: Perry, with a stunted child's legs and a changeling's face, and Dick, who had one squinting eye but a "smile that works." They had been cellmates at the Kansas State Penitentiary where another prisoner had told them about the Clutters—he'd hired out once on Mr. Clutter's farm and thought that Mr. Clutter was perhaps rich. And this is the lead which finally broke the case after Perry and Dick had drifted down to Mexico, back to the midwest, been seen in Kansas City, and were finally picked up in Las Vegas. The last, even more terrible chapters, deal with their confessions, the law man who wanted to see them hanged, back to back, the trial begun in 1960, the post-ponements of the execution, and finally the walk to "The Corner" and Perry's soft-spoken words—"It would be meaningless to apologize for what I did. Even inappropriate. But I do. I apologize." It's a magnificent job—this American tragedy—with the incomparable Capote touches throughout. There may never have been a perfect crime, but if there ever has been a perfect reconstruction of one, surely this must be it.
Pub Date: Jan. 7, 1965
ISBN: 0375507906
Page Count: 343
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Oct. 10, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1965
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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