A sometimes-entertaining but often overblown and under-imagined fictionalized treatment of an enigmatic crime.
The devil made Andrew Cunanan do it, according to this unfocused novel and meditation on the man who murdered fashion designer Gianni Versace.
Cunanan, a 27-year-old sometime-prostitute and drug dealer, became a tabloid superstar in 1997 when he capped a three-month, cross-country killing spree by shooting Versace in the head outside the latter’s Miami mansion. Cunanan then committed suicide and left little evidence behind, resulting in endless speculation about his motives. Diamond’s fictional stab at an answer centers on a nameless, high-ranking devil, a member of Hell’s Grand Council, who narrates Cunanan’s story and claims credit for planning his crimes. Mixing true-crime fact with invented scenes, the devil gives a fragmented, repetitive, and often contradictory account of Cunanan’s deeds. He offers acid commentary on the toxic narcissism and exploitation of Cunanan’s gay demimonde and asserts that he instigated the killings by (falsely) persuading Cunanan that he had AIDS. He situates Cunanan in his own hands-on cosmic insurgency—“I used Cunanan to strike a blow against heaven and for anarchism, espionage, and terrorism”—but sometimes presents himself as a mere figment, “the nothing that men have to create as a scapegoat.” Indeed, when the devil claims to have started the HIV epidemic, killing millions, readers may wonder why he invested so much effort in choreographing Cunanan’s comparatively trivial crimes. Diamond weaves in disquisitions on serial killers and their psychopathologies, on Versace’s flamboyant fashions and swank decor, and on free-thinker Giordano Bruno and the poet John Milton, whose aphorisms are sprinkled throughout. These digressions are often engaging, and some of the insights into Cunanan’s psyche, such as his possible rage at being discarded by sugar daddies when he aged out of his ingenue role, are resonant. But the tale is dominated by the arrogant voice of the devil—“The mutiny against the ‘affirmative lie’ began in heaven when we spirits first rejected the rule of Jehovah and his Great Con that we shall all be with him one day in Paradise”—which grows tiresome. This happens especially in the long passages that critique other, real-life works on the crime and make the novel feel at times like a peevish book review. In the end, Diamond’s bloviating demon all but crowds Cunanan out of the story.
A sometimes-entertaining but often overblown and under-imagined fictionalized treatment of an enigmatic crime.Pub Date: April 29, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5119-6828-7
Page Count: 204
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 10, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tour de force from America's best true-crime writer (Dead by Sunset, 1985, etc). Rule's fans will recognize shades of the pretty poisoner Pat Allanson in Dr. Debora Green, a Kansas woman with a lot of anger. She envies her husband, Mike Farrar, his youthfulness, his successful medical career, and his easy manner with women. Though the two have been married for 18 years and have three children, their relationship has always been rocky. Debora is cruel, vindictive, and has at various times been dependent on pills and alcohol. In 1995, with the family in quiet disorder, Mike and Debora plan to go to Peru. The trip is, in Mike's mind, their final act as a couple. While there Mike meets Celeste Walker, the beautiful wife of an unhappy doctor and an old friend of Debora's. After the trip, they begin an affair; Debora finds out, and Mike suddenly begins to suffer debilitating stomach problems, causing him to be frequently hospitalized. Mike eventually discovers several packets of castor beans in Debora's handbag. The bean is the source of ricin, a deadly poison that is later discovered in Mike's bloodstream. As he begins to recover, he moves out of the house and announces plans to divorce Debora. Only weeks later, a suspicious house fire occurs, the second to strike the family. This time it's fatal: The couple's son and younger daughter die; Debora and the middle daughter survive. An investigation leads back to the furious, defiant Debora, who confesses to both the poisoning and the arson after a carefully rendered and gripping preliminary hearing. She is now in a Kansas prison doing ``a hard forty.'' Impossible to put down (though a little skimpy on psychiatric details), this is, thanks to the vivid, fascinating portrait of Debora and of the slow unraveling of her homicidal schemes, one of Rule's best. (24 pages b&w photos, not seen) (Author tour)
Pub Date: Feb. 3, 1998
ISBN: 0-684-81047-6
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1998
BOOK TO SCREEN
A tragedy is rendered toothless as Stowers examines a child's murder in a tiny town in Texas. Veteran crime journalist and Edgar Award winner Stowers (Open Secrets, 1994; Sins of the Son, 1995; etc.) here studies the mysterious demise of Renee Goode, two years old at the time of her death in Alvin, Tex. Her mother, Annette, and grandmother Sharon Crouch immediately suspect Annette's creepy ex-husband, Shane. Renee had been conceived during a brief reconciliation between the two, and Shane had insisted that Annette abort the fetus; failing that, he simply ignored Renee. After the divorce, Shane relented and after one year asked to see Renee. The little girl was terrified of her father and hated to go to his house, but Annette felt obligated to encourage the relationship between daughter and father. One terrible night, Annette received a shocking call: Renee, who had been sleeping at her father's house, was dead. The coroner ruled the death natural and did only a cursory autopsy. Annette and her mother, Sharon, a sometime private investigator, sprang into action. After both the police and the medical examiner's office rejected their claim of foul play, they researched on their own and discovered that Shane had taken out a life insurance policy on little Renee weeks before her death. Sue Dietrich, an Alvin police officer, took over the moribund case and took it to trial, where Shane was convicted of murder. While the case is certainly horrible, Stowers fails to elevate it to an outrage; the writing is stiff and the characters read like a shallow combination of blue-collar and Nancy Drew. The police work until the entrance of Dietrich was truly shoddy and ruined what should have been an open-and-shut case, but Stowers's account simply doesn't crackle with the energy the three women poured into getting justice.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-312-16981-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1998
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