An engrossing, well-developed true-crime tale, unsettling in its portrayal of the underbelly of its tropical setting.
A juicy, disturbing account of “the world’s first capitalist serial killer,” who wreaked havoc among unsuspecting expatriates in a remote, hedonistic Panama archipelago.
Former diplomat and South American correspondent Foster (Financial Times) was researching the circa-2011 real estate boom in Panama when he became fascinated by the grisly case against William “Wild Bill” Holbert, accused of murdering several fellow Americans in the pristine, remote Bocas del Toro region, a destination for both adventurous retirees and younger wayfarers wishing to lie low. In Bocas, small-time criminal Holbert, along with his silent, moody wife, Jane, reinvented himself as a boisterous partier, opening a ramshackle bar on the property of a retired drug dealer who’d seemingly vanished. Holbert had discovered an intriguing loophole, in that most expats purchased their homes via Panamanian shell corporations: “the person physically holding the paper was the owner.” Remarkably, Holbert “flipped” several properties, foisting his presence upon the expats’ druggy social scene, in which he was largely accepted, until he killed a woman with sufficient presence that “people were now figuring out that [she] wasn’t the only expat who had disappeared.” Foster writes attentively, delivering a keen sense of place, in terms of Panama’s rugged, seductive natural beauty as well as the seedy quality of the self-segregating “gringo” community, where middle-age expats were too busy partying to notice the predator in their midst. Wild Bill makes a grotesque yet compelling central character, a cross between an obnoxious beach bum and the literary psychopath Tom Ripley. Laconic yet detail-oriented prose adds readability to a sordid tale, although digressive narratives detailing the development of the Panama Canal and the rise and fall of dictator Manuel Noriega as additional examples of predatory capitalism don’t quite gel with the humbler malice of Wild Bill.
An engrossing, well-developed true-crime tale, unsettling in its portrayal of the underbelly of its tropical setting.Pub Date: July 12, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-62779-372-8
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 7, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2016
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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