BLIND FAITH

A con brio account of a real-life Double Indemnity murder: a philandering, debtdriven insurance man has his beautiful wife executed for the promise of a cool million and a half in insurance money. On September 7, 1984, Rob and Maria Marshall, an attractive, seemingly happy couple from the shopping-mall-bland "urb" of Toms River, N.J., were driving home from a visit to Atlantic City when Rob swerved the car into a dark picnic area—allegedly to check a soft tire. Minutes later, beautiful Maria was shot dead on the front seat. Rob told local cops that he heard a car pull in behind them, and that he was knocked unconscious and robbed as he knelt by the rear tire. The cops didn't buy it; and even Chris, oldest of Rob's three teen-age sons, instantly suspected his dad. Rob considered himself a pillar of Toms River society, but that cold, consumption-mad society soon spurned him. After all, it turned out that Rob had been planning to dump his wonderfill wife for local sex-bomb Felice; that he was massively in debt; and that he had insured his wife's life for one-and-a-half million. Detectives tracked down New Orleans lowlife Ferlin L'Heureux, who testified that Rob paid him to kill his wife—a task actually accomplished by another mean old southern boy. Kevin Kelly, the tough, idealistic prosecutor, concentrated on nailing Rob. During the trial, as one self-serving lie followed another, Rob stopped being a real human being even to his sons—he became just a bagful of brand-names, soulless and brittle. Found guilty, he now spends his time on New Jersey's Death Row. In a switch from the assiduous, morally ambivalent Fatal Vision (1987), McGinniss here offers a streamlined cautionary tale—airing out his contempt for Toms River's slavish materialism and portraying Rob Marshall not as a monstrous exception but merely as an extreme manifestation of that avarice. A lively true-crimer, then, with a touch of moral fire—and another likely hit for McGinniss.