A well-told true-crime tale mixed with expert political/historical analysis.
New York Times London bureau chief Cowell (A Walking Guide, 2003, etc.) investigates the murder of KGB agent turned defector Alexander Litvinenko.
The George Polk Award–winning journalist’s doggedly reported and dramatically written account takes Litvinenko’s poisoning in a tony London hotel as a jumping-off point to examine the repression and paranoia that characterizes Russia under Vladimir Putin. Litvinenko overcame a troubled childhood and mediocre academic record to win a coveted position in the KGB. He had an average career, which ended when he became disgruntled over corruption within the KGB’s successor organization, the FSB. He moved to London and was frequently a target of Russian assassins, who bungled several efforts until November 1, 2006, when Litvinenko unknowingly drank tea laced with a radioactive isotope and lingered for 22 days before dying. Cowell tells the story with literary panache but doesn’t let his stylish prose eclipse the substance of a sordid tale. The sections about espionage and the assassination are worthy of Tom Clancy, but the author’s political analysis is equally riveting. In his judgment, the seemingly great strides toward democracy taken under Gorbachev and Yeltsin have been reversed by Putin, who has made Russia more authoritarian and less tolerant of dissent. The book’s only notable flaw results from Cowell’s need to share almost all of his admittedly impressive research—the narrative occasionally drags and goes off on tangents. In general, though, the text flows nicely through every twist and turn of the real-life plot, and the questions raised by the author are mostly answered.
A well-told true-crime tale mixed with expert political/historical analysis.Pub Date: Aug. 5, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-385-52355-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Broadway
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2008
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
A tour-de-force of true crime reportage.
Godfrey reconstructs a horrific murder with a vividness found in the finest fiction, without ever sacrificing journalistic integrity.
The novel The Torn Skirt (2002) showed how well the author could capture the roiling inner life of a teenager. She brings that sensibility to bear in this account of the 1997 murder of a 14-year-old girl in British Columbia, a crime for which seven teenage girls and one boy were charged. While there’s no more over-tilled literary soil than that of the shocking murder in a small town, Godfrey manages to portray working-class View Royal in a fresh manner. The victim, Reena Virk, was a problematic kid. Rebelling against her Indian parents’ strict religiosity, she desperately mimicked the wannabe gangsta mannerisms of her female schoolmates, who repaid her idolization by ignoring her. The circumstances leading up to the murder seem completely trivial: a stolen address book, a crush on the wrong guy. But popular girls like Josephine and Kelly had created a vast, imaginary world (mostly stolen from mafia movies and hip-hop) in which they were wildly desired and feared. In this overheated milieu, reality was only a distant memory, and everything was allowed. The murder and cover-up are chilling. Godfrey parcels out details piecemeal in the words of the teens who took part or simply watched. None of them seemed to quite comprehend what was going on, why it happened or even—in a few cases—what the big deal was. The tone veers close to melodrama, but in this context it works, since the author is telling the story from the inside out, trying to approximate the relentlessly self-dramatizing world these kids inhabited. Given most readers’ preference for easily explained and neatly concluded crime narratives, Godfrey’s resolute refusal to impose false order on the chaos of a murder spawned by rumors and lies is commendable.
A tour-de-force of true crime reportage.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-7432-1091-3
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2005
BOOK REVIEW
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BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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