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
A can't-put-it-down account of a case of multiple infanticides by an upstate New York mother, intertwined with sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), bad science, and good detective work, leading to high drama in the courtroom. In the mid 1980s, while prosecuting a suspicious case in which three babies in one family appeared to have died of SIDS, Onondaga County's chief homicide prosecutor, William Fitzpatrick, came across a landmark 1972 paper by a local researcher in Syracuse on the relation of sleep apnea, or suppression of breathing, to the unexplained phenomenon of SIDS. The article, by Dr. Alfred Steinschneider, shaped medical thinking for years, leading doctors to believe that SIDS-causing apnea could run in families, and launched a multi-million-dollar electronic baby-monitoring industry. But it also alerted Fitzpatrick to another suspicious case in which five children in one family had reportedly died of SIDS. Finding that the mother, Waneta Hoyt, lived in a nearby county, the prosecutor turned his information over to his counterpart there. His investigation resulted in Hoyt's trial and conviction, a quarter of a century after the fact, on five counts of murder. The proceedings also in effect put Steinschneider's work on trial, casting them into doubt. Yet today his theories are still influential, while SIDS remains a mystery. Firstman and Talan have made sense out of a mountain of legal and medical documents, and bring to the page a huge cast of living, breathing, unforgettable characters, from the young Waneta, shy and unexpressive but desperate for attention, to the charismatic, arrogant Steinschneider, who allowed theory to blind him to reality and whose only doctoring was of his statistics. The authors also raise serious questions about the interplay of medical, social, political, and financial factors in the propagation of scientific theories. Rich, riveting, and rewarding.
Pub Date: Sept. 15, 1997
ISBN: 0-553-10013-0
Page Count: 560
Publisher: Bantam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1997
In a narrative that holds all the morbid fascination of a bad car wreck, the kid brother of Gary Gilmore—immortalized in Norman Mailer's The Executioner's Song, he campaigned for his own death and became the first person to be executed in America after the death penalty was reinstated in the 1970s—details a sickening family history of violence, rage, and lies that spans several generations. Mother Bessie, who was traumatized by her unforgiving Mormon parents (her father who was beaten with his own father's wooden leg, in turn would batter Bessie's brother until the gawky boy passed out), married Frank Gilmore, a Catholic 20-some years her senior. Frank neglected to mention that he had six ex-wives and several abandoned children. The son of a mother who withheld her love, Frank became a drunk and a thief who left home for months at a time and moved his family frequently to evade the law. To get back at him, Bessie had an affair and became pregnant by one of his sons from a previous marriage. He suspected Gary was not his (in fact, the oldest, Frank, Jr., wasn't) and particularly disdained him. Frank regularly and savagely beat Bessie, and Mikal's older brothers Gary, Frank, Jr., and Gaylen, and robbed them of all shreds of security and self-esteem. Gary, a gifted artist and very intelligent teenager, was sent to reform school because of his father's recalcitrance, and there he became a criminal. His stints in jail further turned him into the monster who senselessly murdered two young Mormon men. Mikal humanizes Gary, and tells of the wrenching legacy he and his other brothers inherited: alcoholic Gaylen died of knife wounds, probably inflicted by a jealous husband; Frank, Jr., cared for the mother who hated him until her death, and then became a recluse; and the youngest, Mikal, now a senior editor at Rolling Stone, lives with the guilt of being his father's favorite and the shame of being Gary's brother. Articulate, brave, and heartbreaking. (15 b&w photos, not seen) (First serial to Rolling Stone; film rights to Alan Pakula; Book-of-the-Month Club featured selection; Quality Paperback Book Club selection; author tour)
Pub Date: June 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-385-42293-8
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1994
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