Not entirely satisfying but an engaging true-crime tale nonetheless.
The true story of a serial killer in 1880s Austin, Texas.
The tension is high throughout Texas Monthly executive editor Hollandsworth’s first book. It’s clear from the narrative polish that true crime is one of the author’s fortes; he provides just the right amount of subtle hinting at a suspect and the accumulation of details left out until the perfect moment. The story may not be new, but it does seem to be forgotten. In 1885, before Jack the Ripper—whom Hollandsworth discusses throughout the book—ever wreaked havoc in London, a man (presumed) was attacking women in Austin. “For the first time on record,” writes the author, “an American city was forced to confront a brilliant, brutal monster who for some unknown reason was driven to murder, in almost ritualistic fashion, one woman after another.” Sometimes terrorizing without resorting to violence and sometimes brutally murdering the women with an ax, the culprit was never found. Plenty of black men were accused and even tried, but all were able to prove their innocence. The attacks stopped as suddenly as they started, and the city eventually moved on. First, though, they debated whether their killer had moved across the Atlantic and taken up residence in London, murdering prostitutes. With the ready-made comparison already echoing through the contemporary accounts, Hollandsworth uses it as well, a little too often. It doesn’t quite pan out for readers who are familiar with the well-trod history of Jack the Ripper. Hollandsworth’s theory about the killings is intriguing, and he subtly introduces it in such a way that it seems almost obvious that the killer has been pinpointed, but ultimately, there is no real resolution. Investigative techniques of the era couldn't compete with the killer, and there is no evidence left to double-check. Even with the benefit of hindsight, this is a mystery that remains such.
Not entirely satisfying but an engaging true-crime tale nonetheless.Pub Date: April 5, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8050-9767-2
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Jan. 17, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2016
PROFILES
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
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
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