An intricate account of a brutal 1983 murder and the ten-year pursuit of the killer, and the jealous woman who put the price on the victim's head. Edgar Award winner Stowers (Innocence Lost, 1990, etc.) has re-created the history of a murder-for-hire in the prosperous Dallas suburbs. Initially baffled by the killing of Rozanne Gailiunas (which occurred in her bedroom, with her four-year-old son in the adjacent room), local police were unable to find enough evidence to indict either of the two most likely suspects: Gailiunas's estranged husband and her lover, Larry Aylor. The case remained dormant for two years until Aylor himself narrowly escaped an attempt on his life. The focus of the inquiry settled on Joy Aylor, Larry's wealthy and beautiful wife; and Detective Morris McGowan's painstaking efforts to bring her—and the killer she hired—to justice become the centerpiece of the book. The reader is introduced to Joy's deranged sister, whose sinister husband becomes a suspect; the sleazy petty criminals who were accused of the murder; and the drug-dealing lawyer who fell for Joy while knowing she was guilty. The cast is bewilderingly large, the digressions are numerous, and the action moves to Canada and Europe as Joy jumps bail and flees with a quarter of a million dollars. The story never really becomes a page-turner, however, as the tedium of real- life police work gets in the way of good storytelling. Potentially interesting personalities are shuffled in and out of the pages before they can develop. Fundamental questions about Joy Aylor's motives and character go unanswered, and McGowan never emerges as the compelling hero that this sort of narrative demands. Stowers succeeds at describing the breadth of an incredibly tangled murder mystery but seldom manages to find the depth. (16 pages of photos, not seen)
Pub Date: June 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-671-70996-8
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Pocket
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1994
Gut-wrenching account of a brutal 1988 rape/murder in Louisville, Ky., and the miscarriage of justice that resulted when killer's prosecution was botched. Louisville Courier-Journal feature writer Hill begins with the disappearance of Brenda Schaefer in September 1988. Her family and the police suspected that her fiancÇ, Mel Ignatow, was responsible, but no physical evidence linked him to the possible crime. After 16 months, Mary Ann Shore-Inlow, Ignatow's mistress, confessed to having been coerced into helping him bury Schaefer's body and led authorities to it. The FBI hastily set up a wiretap in which Shore- Inlow was to initiate a conversation about the burial, but the results were ambiguous and poorly recorded. The arrest was made despite these complications, but the jury refused to convict Ignatow based solely on Shore-Inlow's testimony. Community outrage prompted the authorities to retry the case on federal charges of perjury (since he could not be tried twice for murder). In the interim, Ignatow's house had been sold, and the new inhabitants discovered graphic photographs of the crime hidden under the carpet. This evidence was used to force him to plead guilty to the federal charges, and he received the maximum penalty: eight years and one month, of which he will serve five—about the same that Shore-Inlow received for her plea bargain. The author relates this tragic tale with an overly obsessive attention to detail (even providing the high school background of the rug installers who discovered the photographs) that prompts the uneasy feeling Hill is stalking rather than researching the story—an effect most pronounced when he details the type, color, and size of the socks and underwear worn by the victim on the day she was murdered. Effectively executed, but a repulsive story nonetheless.
Pub Date: July 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-688-12910-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
A crime journalist's painfully honest attempt to come to terms with his son's downward spiral into a life of drugs and criminal activity. Stowers, an Edgar winner for Careless Whispers (not reviewed), documents the gradual metamorphosis of his son Anson from a withdrawn teenager into a drug addict who in 1988 brutally murders his ex-wife in a fit of rage. In quasi-confessional style, a professional who has reported on the tragedies of many other families seeks to understand when, in his own son's life, the point of no return was passed. Stowers delves into the early years of his career, when he spent long hours at the office and relocated several times. The tensions caused by his devotion to work take their toll on his first two marriages, which end in bitter divorces, and on his sons, Anson and Ashley. As a teenager, Anson begins to run away for days at a time; eventually he is arrested for breaking into a house and stealing food. His father enrolls him in a drug rehabilitation program, but Anson's problems with both drugs and the law escalate. His first imprisonment comes when he steals his father's car and robs a store in Louisiana; released early and still severely addicted to drugs, Anson beats, stabs, and strangles his ex-wife, Annette; pleading guilty, he returns to prisonthis time for at least two decades. As Stowers struggles with this painful past, he seems to have missed the uncomfortable irony inherent in using a book to sort out his feelings about a tormented son whose problem was in large part that his father was too wrapped up in writing books. Compelling, but morally troubling. (10 b&w photos, not seen)
Pub Date: July 21, 1995
ISBN: 0-7868-6091-X
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Hyperion
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1995
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