Novelist Cooke applies her considerable storytelling talent to expose the incompetent, ineffective investigation and 1781 trial of John Donellan in England.
Ne’er-do-well Theodosius Boughton needed only one more year to attain his majority and become the Baronet Boughton. The young heir had been infected with venereal disease at age 15 while studying at Eton. Learning nothing from his experience, he was reinfected multiple times and relied on an apothecary to treat him. He also kept a host of self-treatments in his rooms, including mercury and arsenic. At the end of August 1780, a new mixture from the apothecary was delivered to him and set aside for morning. His mother, instead of riding with her son-in-law, Donellan, stayed to ensure her son took his medicine, noting at the time that it smelled of bitter almonds. Theodosius immediately collapsed into a seizure. Donellan was called in, and he immediately took two empty vials and rinsed them out in the basin. Within 20 minutes, Theodosius was dead. Within hours of her son’s death, his mother arranged for the funeral, had breakfast and discussed her future with her son-in-law, whose wife would inherit much of the holdings. Throughout, readers will sense a distinct odor of English class-consciousness in this case, and there’s no doubt that Donellan’s lack of breeding played a considerable part. Why was Donellan accused of poisoning the victim when his mother administered the medicine? Why wasn’t the autopsy performed immediately by competent surgeons? The rulings of the presiding judge at the trial were blatantly slanted, and “expert” witnesses proved to be completely lacking in authority.
Cooke itemizes the available details, but more importantly, she notes the questions that weren’t asked, the facts that were not introduced, and the logical conclusions that never arrived.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-8027-7996-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Walker
Review Posted Online: June 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2012
Categories: GENERAL HISTORY | WORLD | HISTORY
Did you like this book?
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Categories: BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | HOLOCAUST | HISTORY | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | GENERAL HISTORY
Did you like this book?
Rootin’-tootin’ history of the dry-gulchers, horn-swogglers, and outright killers who populated the Wild West’s wildest city in the late 19th century.
The stories of Wyatt Earp and company, the shootout at the O.K. Corral, and Geronimo and the Apache Wars are all well known. Clavin, who has written books on Dodge City and Wild Bill Hickok, delivers a solid narrative that usefully links significant events—making allies of white enemies, for instance, in facing down the Apache threat, rustling from Mexico, and other ethnically charged circumstances. The author is a touch revisionist, in the modern fashion, in noting that the Earps and Clantons weren’t as bloodthirsty as popular culture has made them out to be. For example, Wyatt and Bat Masterson “took the ‘peace’ in peace officer literally and knew that the way to tame the notorious town was not to outkill the bad guys but to intimidate them, sometimes with the help of a gun barrel to the skull.” Indeed, while some of the Clantons and some of the Earps died violently, most—Wyatt, Bat, Doc Holliday—died of cancer and other ailments, if only a few of old age. Clavin complicates the story by reminding readers that the Earps weren’t really the law in Tombstone and sometimes fell on the other side of the line and that the ordinary citizens of Tombstone and other famed Western venues valued order and peace and weren’t particularly keen on gunfighters and their mischief. Still, updating the old notion that the Earp myth is the American Iliad, the author is at his best when he delineates those fraught spasms of violence. “It is never a good sign for law-abiding citizens,” he writes at one high point, “to see Johnny Ringo rush into town, both him and his horse all in a lather.” Indeed not, even if Ringo wound up killing himself and law-abiding Tombstone faded into obscurity when the silver played out.
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21458-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
Categories: GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | GENERAL HISTORY | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | HISTORICAL & MILITARY | UNITED STATES | HISTORY
Did you like this book?
© Copyright 2023 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
