Although Goffard’s style remains virtually the same in all of his stories, his characters and their often bizarre lives and...
A staff writer for the Los Angeles Times presents a collection of swift-flowing pieces about outliers, liars, victims, and victimizers.
Goffard (You Will See Fire: A Search for Justice in Kenya, 2011, etc.), whose work now appears on a podcast and in a new Bravo series (both called Dirty John), is a talented storyteller who eliminates most barriers to his work by employing basic vocabulary, lots of dialogue, short paragraphs, many textual divisions, and other reader-friendly techniques. And the tales themselves are gripping. Ranging in length from a handful of pages to more than 60 (the title story), Goffard’s pieces include, among others, the cases of a man mistakenly jailed for rape and torture, an injured Iraq veteran, youthful runaways hopping trains, a young lawyer on the rise, a PTA president framed for drug possession by a couple of rich, vindictive lawyers, a former Black Panther living and teaching in Tanzania, and, the wildest story of all, “Dirty John,” the tale of a talented and vicious con man who insinuated himself into the lives of lonely women, took their money, and grew violent when truths about him emerged. Although each of the pieces stands on a firm foundation of research, Goffard is able to keep the action and tension so prominent that his research seems almost invisible at times—invisible but nonetheless essential. He ends the collection with a couple of heart-wringers: the story of a Vietnamese woman coming to the U.S. in search of her suddenly silent son and the tale of an elderly man building a boat that he hopes will one day carry him to a death at sea.
Although Goffard’s style remains virtually the same in all of his stories, his characters and their often bizarre lives and predicaments accelerate the heart and animate a variety of emotions.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-982113-25-4
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
This exacting book adds a cogent historical investigation to the relatively few intelligent books about the father of all serial killers. Sensationalistic distortion and overimaginative theorizing have been part of this anonymous criminal's history since the first contemporaneous tabloid stories on the Whitechapel murders and continue in the inquiries of modern ``Ripperologists.'' For example, the letter signed ``Yours truly, Jack the Ripper'' that christened the legend was probably a journalist's headline-grabbing forgery, perpetuated in more hoax letters from the Ripper-crazed public. British historian Sugden corrects such myths and errors with donnish competitiveness, spending only a little time dispatching the more bizarre hypotheses (such as the recent Ripper diary hoax, the fanciful implication of the royal family in the murders, and the innumerable post-Victorian pseudo-suspects). Avoiding the penny-dreadful archives of Ripperology, he diligently approaches the voluminous police work and forensic evidence on the ``canonical'' four victims, all prostitutes, and an equal number of possible ones. Drawing on previous research and his own, he reexamines the eyewitnesses' testimony, inquest reports, newspaper accounts, and police leads (and red herrings). Although the material is still compelling and timely after a century, Sugden's sometimes sluggish prose and narrative do not bring to life the panicked atmosphere of the East End or the tensions within the police department. In the end, though many inconsistencies are swept away and many ambiguities left warily intact, Sugden produces an approximate modus operandi around which a convincing psychological profile can be constructed. His examination of suspects exonerates previous favorites, such as Michael Ostrog, whom Assistant Chief Constable Melville Macnaghten called a ``mad Russian doctor''; but with even his preferred suspect, a Polish con man and poisoner, he reaches the verdict ``not proven.'' Sugden's factual treatment of the murders provides a meticulous and reasoned profile for readers and future detectives. (Photos and maps, not seen)
Pub Date: Nov. 15, 1994
ISBN: 0-7867-0124-2
Page Count: 512
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1994
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