BEST INTENTIONS: The Education and Killing of Edmund Perry

by Robert Sam Anson ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 20, 1987

A piercing exploration in to just what led young Edmund Perry--Exeter-educated, Stanford-bound, Harlem boy--to die, the victim of a bullet from an off-duty New York City policeman in 1985. Anson, author most recently of Exile: The Unquiet Oblivion of Richard Nixon, became interested in the case by his own son's attendance at Exeter. Fully acquainted with this bastion of upper-class privilege, he asked how this young man, who many in Harlem had predicted would one day be the first black President, could have ended up mugging a policeman only days after graduating from prep school. Talking to one detective, Anson got a clue when he asked, ""So what happened to Edmund Perry? if he was such a good kid, how come he did something like this?"" To which the detective responded, ""It was the streets. The fucking streets ate him alive."" But this wasn't enough for Anson. Although residents of Harlem are never surprised when one of their own dies this kind of death--one of Eddie's friends said, ""Edmund died a natural death up here""--the death of one who showed so much promise was reason for more investigative digging. Anson quotes dozens of sources, from family, to teachers, to schoolmates, to police, in an effort to get the lowdown on Perry. And everywhere he turns, he meets the barrier of wonder. Until when interviewing his very last source--a schoolmate--Anson is stunned by the casual comment: ""Of course, you knew about the drugs?"" Perry, it turned out, had been supplying drugs to a particularly wild dorm at Exeter. But, in the end, this is not the story of drug-dealing. It is a tale of a system that turns people into symbols. For, as one of Perry's friends says here, the boy was, after all, a symbol of the blacks left behind on the streets and to the elite at Exeter, who needed their tokens to salve their consciences. The pressure, under those kinds of circumstances, was too much. As another friend said, ""Eddie didn't get killed. He committed suicide."" Investigative journalism at its best.

Pub Date: May 20, 1987

ISBN: 0394757076

Page Count: -

Publisher: Random House

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1987

Categories: NONFICTION