A finely crafted, thoughtful look at the modern-day morass of America’s prison system.
McClintock and Soutter’s novel follows John Greaney, a psychotherapist working in Pennsylvania’s violent prison system.
After losing his job at a state mental hospital that was burned down by one of his patients, Greaney finds work in Pennsylvania’s rough and tough prison system. Mostly he’s at a maximum-security prison, though he also does a stint at a medium-security prison and visits others. The book starts with a bang—an ex-con confronts Greaney at a bar—and the action continues almost nonstop as he works with and fends off a variety of intimidating, crazy criminals ranging from murderers, rapists, and pedophiles to one or two inmates wrongfully convicted and imprisoned. Character studies here delve into the diversity of personalities—from the practically benign to the pathologically monstrous—and paint a bleakly dismal portrait of prison and its denizens as well as the difficult positions for prison psychotherapists. Often hated, gamed, or attacked by prisoners, they garner little sympathy from the guards who are supposed to protect them but who look upon them as naïve bleeding hearts. A proponent of blunt honesty and tough love, Greaney succeeds in counseling some prisoners but concludes that his job is futile. The work is making him as mad as his clients. He begins drinking heavily, gaining weight, and having violent fantasies; eventually, he seeks professional help. This gritty account of the cruel realities of modern American prison life is notable for its insightful character sketches and its detailed descriptions of prisons’ physical and emotional brutality, not to mention the blundering bureaucracy and the American public’s heedlessness. Sharply focused and tightly written, the book makes for a riveting read, though the authors can’t seem to decide whether prisons and prisoners can be reformed or are beyond redemption. Perhaps the conclusion is that American crime and punishment may be one more problem with no solution. But the novel presents a forceful case that America’s prison system is making the most incarcerated population on Earth worse rather than better, endangering not only prisoners, but those who work with them, not to mention the public at large.
A finely crafted, thoughtful look at the modern-day morass of America’s prison system.Pub Date: Aug. 4, 2014
ISBN: 978-1500934132
Page Count: 260
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Feb. 17, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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 Yorker staff 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
"There's got to be something wrong with somebody who'd do a thing like that." This is Perry Edward Smith, talking about himself. "Deal me out, baby...I'm a normal." This is Richard Eugene Hickock, talking about himself. They're as sick a pair as Leopold and Loeb and together they killed a mother, a father, a pretty 17-year-old and her brother, none of whom they'd seen before, in cold blood. A couple of days before they had bought a 100 foot rope to garrote them—enough for ten people if necessary. This small pogrom took place in Holcomb, Kansas, a lonesome town on a flat, limitless landscape: a depot, a store, a cafe, two filling stations, 270 inhabitants. The natives refer to it as "out there." It occurred in 1959 and Capote has spent five years, almost all of the time which has since elapsed, in following up this crime which made no sense, had no motive, left few clues—just a footprint and a remembered conversation. Capote's alternating dossier Shifts from the victims, the Clutter family, to the boy who had loved Nancy Clutter, and her best friend, to the neighbors, and to the recently paroled perpetrators: Perry, with a stunted child's legs and a changeling's face, and Dick, who had one squinting eye but a "smile that works." They had been cellmates at the Kansas State Penitentiary where another prisoner had told them about the Clutters—he'd hired out once on Mr. Clutter's farm and thought that Mr. Clutter was perhaps rich. And this is the lead which finally broke the case after Perry and Dick had drifted down to Mexico, back to the midwest, been seen in Kansas City, and were finally picked up in Las Vegas. The last, even more terrible chapters, deal with their confessions, the law man who wanted to see them hanged, back to back, the trial begun in 1960, the post-ponements of the execution, and finally the walk to "The Corner" and Perry's soft-spoken words—"It would be meaningless to apologize for what I did. Even inappropriate. But I do. I apologize." It's a magnificent job—this American tragedy—with the incomparable Capote touches throughout. There may never have been a perfect crime, but if there ever has been a perfect reconstruction of one, surely this must be it.
Pub Date: Jan. 7, 1965
ISBN: 0375507906
Page Count: 343
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Oct. 10, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1965
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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