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
A hothouse atmosphere of crime and political corruption flavors this true-crime tale from Pulitzer Prizewinning journalist Humes (Murder With a Badge, 1992). The title—a reference to a form of poker that involves bluffing and the betrayal of fellow players—is a metaphor for brazen corruption in Mississippi. A notable example is Biloxi, a city of both graceful antebellum mansions and a sleazy zone of strip joints, whorehouses, casinos, and drug dens run by thugs and con artists known as the ``Dixie Mafia'' and winked at by politicians and police. In September 1987, this city of easy virtue was rocked by the slaying of mayoral candidate Margaret Sherry and her husband, Vince, a well-known state circuit judge. Prior to her death Margaret had hurled corruption charges at the mayoral incumbent and Vince had spoken from the bench of threats against his life. Yet the Biloxi police pursued the bizarre theory that the Sherrys' son Eric had murdered his parents in a rage after discovering that he was adopted. The police further failed to question key witnesses and mishandled physical evidence, prompting the Sherrys' daughter Lynne to involve the county sheriff's office and the FBI, hire a private detective, and even dig up leads herself. Eventually, suspicion settled on a cast of characters that included a cold-eyed, one-legged hit man; a lifer using money from a gay lonely-hearts scam to bribe his way out of prison; and Vince's friend and law partner, Pete Halat, who allegedly allowed his office to be used in the scam and later provided conflicting accounts of his discovery of the Sherrys' bodies. Four years later, four defendants were convicted of the murder—but Halat, later mayor himself, was never formally charged. Not surprisingly, this engrossing case of Deep South corruption and murder is being adapted for a four-part NBC-TV miniseries, with Valerie Bertinelli as the spunky avenging angel. (16 pages of b&w photographs, not seen) (Author tour)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-671-88998-2
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1994
An acerbic period sketch and a readable tale of pure Gothic horror straight from the heartland of America.
The ghoulish saga of Dr. H.H. Holmes, the dapper devil who established himself as America's first serial killer 100 years ago.
Schechter (American Literature and Culture/Queens College, CUNY; Deranged) offers a disjointed opening before settling into his tale. He begins with a dramatic depiction of the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. He then writes of a New Hampshire boy named Herman who is 11 years in 1871; Herman has a penchant for skinning and deboning live animals. The next time we see him, it is under the alias of Dr. H.H. Holmes, venturing into the Chicago suburb of Englewood to weasel a profitable drugstore from its dying patron and his overworked wife. Holmes then constructs a three-story castle containing such delights as a greased shaft that ends in a dark cellar filled with vats of chemical corrosives; this labyrinthine chamber of horrors becomes one of his murder devices. Under investigation by the government for financial irregularities, Holmes sets fire to the castle, flees Chicago, and launches a series of insurance scams. He murders his oafish assistant, Benjamin Pitezel, and forces one of Pitezel's four threadbare children to identify her father's decayed body so that he can collect a $10,000 life insurance policy. Eventually Holmes is discovered and several decomposed bodies are exhumed from under the remains of the castle. In custody, Holmes confesses bluntly, "I was born with the devil in me. I could not help the fact that I was a murderer, no more than the poet can help the inspiration to sing.'' With a total of 27 victims, Holmes was tried (the case became a public sensation). After his conviction for Pitezel's murder, Holmes confessed to 26 other killings—some for insurance money, some out of sexual jealousy, others for fear the victims would give him away. Rather than psychoanalyzing his psychotic subject, Schechter sticks firmly to the gory narrative of his crimes, in which the description of the murderous castle stands as a spectacular centerpiece.
An acerbic period sketch and a readable tale of pure Gothic horror straight from the heartland of America.Pub Date: Aug. 15, 1994
ISBN: 0-671-73216-1
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Pocket
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1994
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