Informative, plainly recounted trip into a nexus of homegrown evil.
Ex-biker ends up a top FBI informant inside a white supremacist group.
In 1996, Hall was living on disability checks in Dayton, Ohio, fixing the occasional motorcycle for friends and taking it easy. That changed after he provided a marijuana connection to a distant relative, who turned out to be working with the feds. Special Agent Burkey persuaded Hall to use his biker-club connections to infiltrate the local chapter of the Aryan Nation. The story of Hall’s smooth climb up the AN’s chain of command is related in straightforward fashion; his words alternate with Burkey’s terse accounts in a dual memoir stitched together by prolific crime scribe Ramsland (Inside the Minds of Healthcare Serial Killers, 2007, etc.). At 6’4” and 350 lbs., sporting abundant tattoos, Hall looked like many other AN members, but he was hardly comfortable in his hatemongering surroundings. He had biracial nieces and nephews, and he viewed his new “friends” as psychopathic losers who couldn’t hack real life. But he acted his part well and was soon being groomed for a pastoral position in the AN’s pseudo-Christian hierarchy. A paranoid, trigger-happy bunch of KKK rednecks, militia types and Nazi skinheads made highly dangerous companions, but Burkey kept Hall burrowing deeper. A year after the Oklahoma City bombing, the FBI was fiercely focused on preventing another attack by white supremacists like Timothy McVeigh. Pretending to be a bile-filed racist took its toll on the easygoing Hall. By the time he was made privy to plans for truck bombings and the assassination of white-supremacist scourge Morris Dees, he was having panic attacks, knocking back Xanax and drinking himself to sleep. While the knocked-together prose shows signs of Ramsland’s overly busy schedule, she does a good job of keeping the focus on Hall’s problematic double life, relegating the FBI’s role to the background. This view of the domestic terrorist underground benefits hugely from an impressively charismatic informant’s ringside seat.
Informative, plainly recounted trip into a nexus of homegrown evil.Pub Date: April 15, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-345-49694-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2008
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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