Novelist and essayist Indiana (Resentment, 1997; Rent Boy, 1994; etc.) combines fictional and journalistic techniques in this true crime “hybrid of narration and reflection,” which is, in his words, “a pastiche” that is “fact-based, but with no pretense to journalistic “objectivity.” Andrew Cunanan caught the media’s full attention with the murder of fashion designer Gianni Versace, an act that was the culmination of a rampage in which Cunanan apparently killed four other men before Versace and himself afterward. Indiana dismisses the media’s hypercoverage at the time as largely fanciful: —Cunanan’s life was transformed from the somewhat poignant and depressing but fairly ordinary thing it was into a narrative overripe with tabloid evil.— Indiana bases his own portrait on interviews with Cunanan’s childhood friends, school reports, numerous of his acquaintances in San Diego, and FBI and local police reports. The portrait that emerges from this in-depth probe is of a smooth, clever pathological liar, a well-known, well-dressed, but not especially well-liked member of San Diego’s gay subculture. Indiana portrays Cunanan as having a penchant for sadomasochistic sex in which he was the dominating figure. Sometimes kept by an older man, sometimes peddling prescription drugs, Cunanan generally lived well, but in 1997, things took a turn for the worse. With his credit maxed out, he headed for Minnesota to visit two former colleagues, Jeff Trail and David Madson, neither of whom was pleased to see him. Indiana lets his imagination loose on the known forensic data to create the ghastly scenes in which Cunanan murders first Trail (furiously) and then Madson (cold-bloodedly); his brutal S&M slaying of Lee Miglin, a wealthy older man; and his shooting of a cemetery caretaker whose truck he stole. As Cunanan’s life spirals downward, Indiana portrays his psyche taking a nosedive, too. In his version of Versace’s shooting, he has the fugitive Cunanan hearing voices that direct his actions. It may not be the truth, but it all seems quite plausible. A vivid and gripping account. (Author tour)
Pub Date: April 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-06-019145-7
Page Count: 272
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
IN THE NEWS
Masterful research, although some material appears to function as a story-stretcher.
A popular true-crime writer offers his fifth in a chilling series on serial killers.
Schechter has written about familiar murderers like Ed Gein (Deviant, 1998) and H.H. Holmes (Depraved, 1996), but this time he focuses on a deformed 14-year-old killer whose rampage shocked 19th-century Boston. Jesse Harding Pomeroy was arrested in 1874 for the brutal murder of a four-year-old boy and was quickly nicknamed “The Boston Boy Fiend.” His sadistic career had begun three years earlier with the sexual torture of several younger boys. Five of his victims identified him from his oversized head and his milky right eye: he ended up sentenced to six years in reform school (where he thrilled to the punitive beatings of other boys). A born psychopath, he played the system and got out early. His next act was to kill a young girl who came into his mother’s store, followed by the child who ended his string of crimes. Schechter introduces the story with an informative overview of various periods in history—including the 1990s—where child killers raised a social alarm. He also notes that Pomeroy made a Lecteresque cameo in Caleb Carr’s novel The Alienist. More compelling is Schechter’s reconstruction of the sensation-hungry times: he offers newspaper clips, accounts of other crimes, clashing diagnoses from forensic alienists, and bizarre social theories such as the concern that lurid dime novels created such monsters. Pomeroy, who wrote a self-serving autobiography, received a controversial death sentence that was later commuted to life in solitary. His persistent attempts to escape surprised everyone and kept him in the Boston papers for the next 50 years.
Masterful research, although some material appears to function as a story-stretcher.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-671-01448-X
Page Count: 308
Publisher: Pocket
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2000
Overly detailed characterizations encumber an otherwise tension-filled tale of crime and punishment.
A murder investigation becomes a large-scale assault on drug gangs in this painstaking first book by New York City journalist Stone.
When a college boy from Tarrytown, New York, was inexplicably shot to death on Manhattan's West Side Highway in 1991, no one believed the murder would be solved. The first tip came six months into the investigation, after detectives Garry Dugan and Mark Tebbens traced several multiple homicides to the "Wild Cowboys"—a lawless Dominican gang from Washington Heights. Selling drugs and guns for profits as high as $30,000 a week, they had turned their neighborhood into a war zone. They bullied children into delivering contraband and killed anyone who got in their way—even those who just happened across their path. The ensuing investigation, one of the largest in New York's history, inspired the formation of the elite Homicide Investigation Unit, headed by Walter Arsenault. This team of prosecutors and detectives shared a passion for justice, yet it succumbed to personality clashes that further complicated an already difficult job. The strained team dynamic during this crucial case raises the stakes in an escalating story of how nine gang members are finally prosecuted for conspiracy via an unprecedented cooperation of DAs from Manhattan, Brooklyn, and the Bronx. Making arrests was a dangerous task, as was the job of keeping timid witnesses from recanting. Yet piecing together effective testimony through a web of tenuous deals, pleadings, and promises could mean solving 37 homicides—including that of the Tarrytown boy. It would also clear the Cowboys from the streets and send a powerful message to other gangs who believed they could get away with murder.
Overly detailed characterizations encumber an otherwise tension-filled tale of crime and punishment.Pub Date: Sept. 19, 2000
ISBN: 0-385-48972-2
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2000
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