SAVAGE GRACE

by Natalie & Steven M.L. Aronson Robins ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 22, 1985

It is a world too daring even for the likes of Collins or Krantz, much too real for the pens of Sheldon or Robbins, and much too sinister for either a Sanders or a King. For it is the real world of the rich, littered with dried blood and heated passions, the cities of glamour and the tools of murder. It is filled with all that is fine, all that is wonderful. And sometimes, in such a world, somebody dies. Savage Grace is a brutal indictment of the rich delivered through a chilling, almost police-procedural account of the 1972 murder of Barbara Baekeland. The accused: her 26-year-old son. At stake: the multi million dollar plastic fortune left them by a Belgian-born turn-of-the-century immigrant named Leo Hendrik Baekeland whose invention, Bakelite, helped change the shape of things to come, plastic-wise. It is first-rate soap opera, the kind of drama we don't get on Dynasty or Dallas. These are the very rich and they are different especially in the two dark arenas of greed and sex. They partied with Dali and the Vanderbilts. They summered in France and skied the Alps. A father and his son shared the same young woman. They spent money. Then, on a hazy fall day, in London, a son left his mother for dead on the kitchen floor of a rented fiat, blood cascading from her heart. Utilizing a vast file of diaries, letters, hospital and State Department documents and at least 200 interviews, Robins and Aronson have reconstructed a large-scale saga that is frightening enough to make a reader swear away from large amounts of money--almost. A chilling American success story, in the mode of Coleman's At Mother's Request.

Pub Date: July 22, 1985

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Morrow

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1985

Categories: NONFICTION