A suspenseful read that asks more questions than the author is prepared to answer.
The crime that inspired a crime writer comes back to haunt her.
One morning in 1973, Kane’s soon-to-be mother-in-law, Betty, was murdered. While Betty’s husband, Duane, was investigated for the murder, he eventually walked free, leaving Kane—and the rest of Betty’s family—to reckon with the aftermath. For the author, that meant writing a crime novel loosely based on the violent events, though by the time Quiet Time was published, she and Betty’s son had gotten divorced. As a result of that book’s publication, the cold case was reopened, and Kane eventually had to testify. In this uneven narrative, she revisits the circumstances of the original crime, including witness statements, court papers, police reports, and her own conversations with family members. Kane’s stated intent is to examine how her own fictionalized account unwittingly played a role in these events. The short, stunted chapters certainly add to a quick-paced, suspenseful flow, but Kane’s writing is often so fractured and truncated that significant analysis eludes her. She repeats information without elaborating on it, and she fails to examine the motivations, mindsets, and even basic reactions of her characters, none of whom are satisfyingly rendered—not even her ex-husband, Doug. In fact, she doesn’t describe Doug’s reaction to his mother’s murder until halfway through the book. Even then, the description is sparse. Almost 10 years after the murder, Doug spoke to a sister about the tragedy. “This was the first time he’d said he wanted to talk to one of his siblings about his mother’s death,” writes Kane. “He took the bus to Philly. When he returned, he was shattered. She couldn’t believe I had doubts, he told me. She always knew Dad killed Mom.” While the author excels at pulling together a mountain of documents, her analyses—and many of her descriptions—leave much to be desired.
A suspenseful read that asks more questions than the author is prepared to answer.Pub Date: May 2, 2023
ISBN: 9781610886116
Page Count: 278
Publisher: Bancroft Press
Review Posted Online: March 2, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 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 Yorkerstaff 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 pleasure for fans of old-school historical narratives.
Avuncular observations on matters historical from the late popularizer of the past.
McCullough made a fine career of storytelling his way through past events and the great men (and occasional woman) of long-ago American history. In that regard, to say nothing of his eschewing modern technology in favor of the typewriter (“I love the way the bell rings every time I swing the carriage lever”), he might be thought of as belonging to a past age himself. In this set of occasional pieces, including various speeches and genial essays on what to read and how to write, he strikes a strong tone as an old-fashioned moralist: “Indifference to history isn’t just ignorant, it’s rude,” he thunders. “It’s a form of ingratitude.” There are some charming reminiscences in here. One concerns cajoling his way into a meeting with Arthur Schlesinger in order to pitch a speech to presidential candidate John F. Kennedy: Where Richard Nixon “has no character and no convictions,” he opined, Kennedy “is appealing to our best instincts.” McCullough allows that it wasn’t the strongest of ideas, but Schlesinger told him to write up a speech anyway, and when it got to Kennedy, “he gave a speech in which there was one paragraph that had once sentence written by me.” Some of McCullough’s appreciations here are of writers who are not much read these days, such as Herman Wouk and Paul Horgan; a long piece concerns a president who’s been largely lost in the shuffle too, Harry Truman, whose decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan McCullough defends. At his best here, McCullough uses history as a way to orient thinking about the present, and with luck to good ends: “I am a short-range pessimist and a long-range optimist. I sincerely believe that we may be on the way to a very different and far better time.”
A pleasure for fans of old-school historical narratives.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781668098998
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 26, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
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