A satisfying read that gives the impression that some new justice has been done.
A comprehensive telling of the North London Cellar Murder and its aftermath.
Kunegunde (often spelled Kunigunde) Mackamotzki had other names and trajectories before she became Belle Elmore, a singer, friend, and Music Hall Ladies Guild treasurer who was brutally killed by her husband in early 1910. Hawley Harvey Crippen was a fraudster preoccupied with wealth and notoriety who moved mysteriously between questionable business enterprises and romantic interests. And Ethel Le Neve was the last of Crippen’s paramours, boldly winding through her own layers of obfuscation and opportunism into both his workplace and his home. While Belle’s killing and Crippen’s and Le Neve’s arrests and trials became the stuff of cultural legend, the maze between these three individuals has long been muddied by deceptions, omissions, and inaccuracies. Rubenhold, whose previous work includes The Five: The Women Killed by Jack the Ripper, leaps into the dark holes in the historical record with her trademark commitment to reorienting mythologized true-crime stories around the stories of the victims. She meticulously constructs the fullness of the web that contains Belle, Crippen, and Ethel, along with the friends, colleagues, and family members affected by Belle’s murder, sketching the turn-of-the-century backdrop with notes on the era’s medical practices, London’s sphere of stage performers, and the influential notion of the “New Woman.” The author deftly maintains fidelity not only to facts, distinguishing between what can and cannot be certain and proved, but also to narrative intrigue, somehow creating suspense despite decades of extensive journalistic coverage and study of her subject. But Rubenhold’s true mark as a narrator of historical true crime is reinforced in this work by her continued loyalty to the women whose characters and stories have been flattened and overshadowed by journalists’ assumptions, their killers’ fame, or the simple fact of their victimhood.
A satisfying read that gives the impression that some new justice has been done.Pub Date: March 25, 2025
ISBN: 9780593184615
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.
A coffee-table book celebrates Michelle Obama’s sense of fashion.
Illustrated with hundreds of full-color photographs, Obama’s chatty latest book begins with some school portraits from the author’s childhood in Chicago and fond memories of back-to-school shopping at Sears, then jumps into the intricacies of clothing oneself as the spouse of a presidential candidate and as the first lady. “People looked forward to the outfits, and once I got their attention, they listened to what I had to say. This is the soft power of fashion,” she says. Obama is grateful and frank about all the help she got along the way, and the volume includes a long section written by her primary wardrobe stylist, Koop—28 years old when she first took the job—and shorter sections by makeup artists and several hair stylists, who worked with wigs and hair extensions as Obama transitioned back to her natural hair, and grew out her bangs, at the end of her husband’s second term. Many of the designers of the author’s gowns, notably Jason Wu, who designed several of her more striking outfits, also contribute appreciative memories. Besides candid and more formal photographs, the volume features many sketches of her gowns by their designers, closeups on details of those gowns, and magazine covers from Better Homes & Gardens to Vogue. The author writes that as a Black woman, “I was under a particularly white-hot glare, constantly appraised for whether my outfits were ‘acceptable’ and ‘appropriate,’ the color of my skin somehow inviting even more judgment than the color of my dresses.” Overall, though, this is generally a canny, upbeat volume, with little in the way of surprising revelations.
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9780593800706
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 7, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
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