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 ripping, gripping investigation of the puzzling, much-debated circumstances surrounding the death of the great 19th-century writer, poet, and critic. It is all too fitting that Poe, the inventor of the detective story, should have met with an uncommon death. He was traveling from Richmond, Va., to New York when he disappeared for almost a week, turning up at last in Baltimore, blind drunk and near death. Taken to the hospital, he died a few days later, never revealing where he’d been or what had occurred. There are several commonly accepted explanations for what really happened. One holds that Poe reverted to tippling from and went on a mammoth bender. But as Edgar-winning literary detective Walsh (for Poe the Detective, not reviewed) notes, Poe had just signed a temperance pledge in order to please his new fiancÇe—and was traveling north to earn much-needed money. While he might not have honored the letter of his pledge, he was unlikely to fall so extravagantly off the wagon. The other, more regarded—though more incredible—explanation, cited by most biographers and even poet Harte Crane in “The Bridge,” is that Poe was press- ganged or “cooped” by villainous ward-heelers, drugged, and taken from polling booth to polling both to vote multiple times in a congressional election. Walsh handily demolishes this hypothesis as well. His own account of what transpired is a clever weaving together of many disparate strands. Unlike the solution to Poe’s “The Purloined Letter,” the evidence here is not hidden in the open. With the little he has to work with, Walsh has to make a few assumptions, suppositions, contradictions of the records, even leaps of faith, but he is still able to build a case that is both persuasive and literarily elegant. An utterly engaging and original work of detection. (17 b&w illustrations)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-8135-2605-1
Page Count: 180
Publisher: Rutgers Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1998
Historians Grant (Framingham Coll.) and Katz (Long Island Univ.) Offer objective but dramatically narrated accounts of ten major trials that reflected the fierce crosswinds of change in the US in the tumultuous “20s. For instance, the Sacco-Vanzetti case, in which two Italian immigrants were found guilty of murder on seemingly slender evidence, reflected fear and anger at the increasing number of foreigners settling in the US. The national pastime, baseball, was tainted in the Chicago “Black Sox” scandal. The case of comic actor Fatty Arbuckle, who after two hung juries was finally acquitted of manslaughter charges ensuing from a wild party, represented public outrage against the hedonistic morals of Hollywood in a still puritanical America. Teapot Dome, the Scopes trial, and the case of Leopold and Loeb are among the other cases ably recounted by the authors. (16 pages illustrations, not seen)
Pub Date: Dec. 1, 1998
ISBN: 1-885119-52-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1998
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