by David France ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 12, 1992
A plunge into the midnight world of gay sadomasochism and murder-for-kicks that was the playground of Manhattan art dealer Andrew Crispo and his 22-year-old protegÇ Bernard LeGeros. The violence-ridden narrative first appeared in abbreviated form in Vanity Fair. Orphan/hustler/con man Crispo moved to N.Y.C. in 1964, just when the art world was discovering the publicity value of glitz. He fell almost by accident into the gallery scene, and with his combination of good looks, slick wardrobe, and glib tongue, he soon was highly successful, opening his own gallery in 1972. Depravity and drugs—especially cocaine—in increasing doses followed. In 1984, Crispo hired LeGeros, not so much for his art expertise as for his willingness to engage in the whippings and degradations that Crispo imposed on gay partners. When, one day, Crispo picked up Norwegian fashion student Eigil Dag Vesti and suggested that the young man be ``snuffed,'' LeGeros went along with the plan, putting two bullets into Vesti after an evening of sadomasochism. Eventually implicated—the murder took place a few yards from LeGeros's vacation home in New York's Rockland County—LeGeros confessed. Crispo, however, remains unindicted for the crime. Here, France keeps the action moving briskly, though the narrative is plagued with weaknesses both psychological (e.g., the suggestion that LeGeros's mindless enslavement to Crispo may have resulted from the younger man's mother having given away his dog years before) and stylistic (``Everywhere there was the particulate remains of urban decay suspended at shirt level, nose level, pore level, pouncing at will''). And, despite an expected air of disapproval, the text also holds a subtle sense of prurience. Bruisingly detailed: not for the fainthearted.
Pub Date: June 12, 1992
ISBN: 0-446-51606-6
Page Count: 368
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1992
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by Rebecca Godfrey ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 2005
A tour-de-force of true crime reportage.
Godfrey reconstructs a horrific murder with a vividness found in the finest fiction, without ever sacrificing journalistic integrity.
The novel The Torn Skirt (2002) showed how well the author could capture the roiling inner life of a teenager. She brings that sensibility to bear in this account of the 1997 murder of a 14-year-old girl in British Columbia, a crime for which seven teenage girls and one boy were charged. While there’s no more over-tilled literary soil than that of the shocking murder in a small town, Godfrey manages to portray working-class View Royal in a fresh manner. The victim, Reena Virk, was a problematic kid. Rebelling against her Indian parents’ strict religiosity, she desperately mimicked the wannabe gangsta mannerisms of her female schoolmates, who repaid her idolization by ignoring her. The circumstances leading up to the murder seem completely trivial: a stolen address book, a crush on the wrong guy. But popular girls like Josephine and Kelly had created a vast, imaginary world (mostly stolen from mafia movies and hip-hop) in which they were wildly desired and feared. In this overheated milieu, reality was only a distant memory, and everything was allowed. The murder and cover-up are chilling. Godfrey parcels out details piecemeal in the words of the teens who took part or simply watched. None of them seemed to quite comprehend what was going on, why it happened or even—in a few cases—what the big deal was. The tone veers close to melodrama, but in this context it works, since the author is telling the story from the inside out, trying to approximate the relentlessly self-dramatizing world these kids inhabited. Given most readers’ preference for easily explained and neatly concluded crime narratives, Godfrey’s resolute refusal to impose false order on the chaos of a murder spawned by rumors and lies is commendable.
A tour-de-force of true crime reportage.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-7432-1091-3
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2005
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by Sidney Powell ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2014
The author brings the case for judicial redress before the court of public opinion.
A former Justice Department lawyer, who now devotes her private practice to federal appeals, dissects some of the most politically contentious prosecutions of the last 15 years.
Powell assembles a stunning argument for the old adage, “nothing succeeds like failure,” as she traces the careers of a group of prosecutors who were part of the Enron Task Force. The Supreme Court overturned their most dramatic court victories, and some were even accused of systematic prosecutorial misconduct. Yet former task force members such as Kathryn Ruemmler, Matthew Friedrich and Andrew Weissman continued to climb upward through the ranks and currently hold high positions in the Justice Department, FBI and even the White House. Powell took up the appeal of a Merrill Lynch employee who was convicted in one of the subsidiary Enron cases, fighting for six years to clear his name. The pattern of abuse she found was repeated in other cases brought by the task force. Prosecutors of the accounting firm Arthur Andersen pieced together parts of different statutes to concoct a crime and eliminated criminal intent from the jury instructions, which required the Supreme Court to reverse the Andersen conviction 9-0; the company was forcibly closed with the loss of 85,000 jobs. In the corruption trial of former Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens, a key witness was intimidated into presenting false testimony, and as in the Merrill Lynch case, the prosecutors concealed exculpatory evidence from the defense, a violation of due process under the Supreme court’s 1963 Brady v. Maryland decision. Stevens’ conviction, which led to a narrow loss in his 2008 re-election campaign and impacted the majority makeup of the Senate, seems to have been the straw that broke the camel's back; the presiding judge appointed a special prosecutor to investigate abuses. Confronted with the need to clean house as he came into office, writes Powell, Attorney General Eric Holder has yet to take action.
The author brings the case for judicial redress before the court of public opinion.Pub Date: May 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61254-149-5
Page Count: 456
Publisher: Brown Books
Review Posted Online: April 29, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014
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