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LOVE'S BLOOD

Name: LOVE'S BLOOD
Author: Clark Howard
ISBN: 0-517-58494-8

by Clark Howard ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 7, 1993

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Deeply engaging tale of a teenager who may—or may not—have helped kill her parents. This is Clark's 20th work of mystery or true crime (Hard City, 1990, etc.). There's no question that Patricia Ann Columbo, 19, and her longtime sexual-sociopath lover, Frank DeLuca, 37, were involved in the murder of Patti's parents and her brother Michael, 13, in the family's Elk Grove Village, Illinois, home on a bloody spring night in 1976. But as the grisly details gather here, you note that Patti is never actually seen with weapon in hand—and by book's end you're likely to conclude that there's considerable evidence that Patti killed no one. Although she conspired with two men she thought were mob hit men to have her parents and brother killed, it seems that Patti's paranoid boyfriend actually did the deed in a fit of fear and rage that erupted during the perfect moment for a triple murder. Guilt fell first on Patti, who, upon her arrest, claimed to be able to remember that night only as if in a vision- -and, by the close here, it becomes clear how the hysterical teenager, who was in the house but not in the murder rooms, could remember the night of the killings only in a surreal way. Much of Howard's story comes from Patti herself, now 37, whom the author interviewed at length in prison, where she's serving a 200-to-300- year sentence. Howard takes no sides and is a model of evenhanded true-crime writing. Although paced for snails, with invented dialogue and much graphic lovemaking, his narrative keeps a tight grip, especially with Patti's forbidden 15-year-old body—and its ripening—as the emotional focus. A rich mix of sex and blood with eroticism too strong for any Amy Fisher-type TV miniseries—though it's a Drew Barrymore natural. (Sixteen pages of b&w photos—not seen)

Pub Date: April 7, 1993

ISBN: 0-517-58494-8

Page Count: 448

Publisher: Crown

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1993

Categories:

TRUE CRIME

- BOOK REVIEW
CHALLENGE THE WIDOW-MAKER
by Clark Howard

- BOOK REVIEW
CROWDED LIVES
by Clark Howard

- BOOK REVIEW
CITY BLOOD
by Clark Howard

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POISON MIND

THE TRUE STORY OF THE MENSA MURDERER AND THE POLICE WOMAN WHO RISKED HER LIFE TO BRING HIM TO JUSTICE

by Jeffrey Good & Susan Goreck ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 22, 1995

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Irritatingly melodramatic and superficial treatment of the 1988 murder of a Florida woman who drank a poisoned Coca-Cola. Surprising, considering that coauthor Goreck was the undercover cop whose work brought the killer to trial. Peggy Carr took four months to die; two sons, Travis and Duane, spent several weeks in the hospital, ravaged by the thallium that had somehow been put into an eight-pack of Coke. Peggy's new but troubled marriage to Pye Carr made him the initial suspect, but he, too, had the poison in his system. As Good (a reporter for the St. Petersburg Times) and Goreck recount the case, they pass over seemingly obvious questions. For example, why had no one contacted the police about the threatening letter the family had received four months earlier? Why did it take two months for the police to get around to questioning next-door neighbor George Trepal, an ex- convict (he had operated a methamphetamine lab) whose belligerent wife, a doctor, fought bitterly with Peggy over her teenage sons' loud music and shenanigans? There had even been suspicion that Trepal had poisoned Pye's dog. When Goreck goes undercover, she introduces herself at a Mensa Mystery Weekend hosted by Trepal. A computer hobbyist and a ``fumbling nerd,'' Trepal befriends Goreck, who pumps him for advice on how to rid herself of an abusive ``husband.'' The investigation took more than a year and produced primarily circumstantial evidence and supposition over George's eccentricities: his collection of bondage equipment and movies; the unfinished ``torture chamber'' in his new home. A bottle of thallium was found in his workshopone year after the murderand he had compiled a manual on voodoo poisoning. That was enough to convict him; he's now awaiting appeal on Florida's death row. Despite all the details of his lifestyle and the FBI-generated psychological profile, there's so much left unexplained that the book feels incomplete. (8 pages b&w photos, not seen) (Film rights to HBO)

Pub Date: Sept. 22, 1995

ISBN: 0-688-11947-6

Page Count: 384

Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1995

Categories:

TRUE CRIME

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MIDNIGHT IN THE GARDEN OF GOOD AND EVIL

A SAVANNAH STORY

by John Berendt ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1994

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Steamy Savannah—and the almost unbelievable assortment of colorful eccentrics that the city seems to nurture—are minutely and wittily observed here. In the early 1980's, Berendt (former editor of New York Magazine) realized that for the price of a nouvelle cuisine meal, he could fly to just about any city in the US that intrigued him. In the course of these travels, he fell under the spell of Savannah, and moved there for a few years. Central to his story here is his acquaintance with Jim Williams, a Gatsby-like, newly moneyed antiques dealer, and Williams's sometime lover Danny Hansford, a ``walking streak of sex''—a volatile, dangerous young hustler whose fatal shooting by Williams obsesses the city. Other notable characters include Chablis, a show-stealing black drag queen; Joe Odom, cheerfully amoral impresario and restaurateur; Luther Driggers, inventor of the flea collar, who likes it to be known that he has a supply of poison so lethal that he could wipe out every person in the city if he chose to slip it into the water supply; and Minerva, a black occultist who works with roots and whom Williams hires to help deal with what the antiques dealer believes to be Hansford's vengeful ghost. Showing a talent for penetrating any social barrier, Berendt gets himself invited to the tony Married Women's Club; the rigidly proper Black Debutantes' Ball (which Chablis crashes); the inner sanctum of power-lawyer Sonny Seiler; and one of Williams's fabled Christmas parties (the one for a mixed group; the author opts out of the following evening's ``bachelors only'' fàte). The imprisonment and trial of Williams, and his surprising fate, form the narrative thread that stitches together this crazy quilt of oddballs, poseurs, snobs, sorceresses, and outlaws. Stylish, brilliant, hilarious, and coolhearted.