A vividly detailed and stylishly written portrait of an Austin long gone by.
How a creepy Texas crook with lots of friends was taken down by a valiant public servant and a dogged newsman.
Sublett, a revered Austin musician and mystery author, found the seeds of his latest nonfiction book on Austin-related topics when researching his affecting memoir Never the Same Again (2004), in which he recounted the 1976 murder of his girlfriend by a serial killer while he was out at a gig. The author kept encountering news stories about a guy named Frank Smith, who turned out to be "Don Corleone as reimagined by Hee Haw.” As Sublett describes him, Smith’s “criminal record and unsavory associations did no apparent harm to his wrecking yard business. He thrived on being quoted in the media, and reporters happily accommodated him. He was a six-foot-two, XXXL loose cannonball of contradictions….The son of a Baptist preacher, he often quoted the Bible, even in response to a message that a murder-for-hire contract had been fulfilled.” Among other misdeeds, Smith engineered an outrageous crime against the Rabbs, a sweet family who ran a junkyard, paying them $15,000 in cash for a group of vehicles and then sending gunmen over to steal the money back. The hero of Sublett's narrative is the late, great Ronnie Earle, longtime Travis County district attorney. Even though he held many left-leaning beliefs, “Earle was no coddler of criminals, and he came down on Frank Smith like a ton of bricks, using every weapon at his disposal." Also integral to the pursuit of Smith was Austin American-Statesman journalist Bill Cryer, whose crime reporting Sublett quotes admiringly and to great effect. This may seem more like fodder for a magazine article than a book, and there is more repetition of the facts than necessary, but readers interested in Austin history and quirky true crime will find plenty to enjoy.
A vividly detailed and stylishly written portrait of an Austin long gone by.Pub Date: May 17, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-4773-2398-4
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Univ. of Texas
Review Posted Online: Feb. 14, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2022
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 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
A harrowing memoir of grief and love.
An indelible portrait of a mother’s courage.
Award-winning novelist McCann and Foley, mother of murdered journalist James Wright Foley (1973-2014), offer a powerful recounting of the unspeakable tragedy and its aftermath. In August 2014, after being held hostage for two years, Jim was beheaded by Islamic Group terrorists. He had been taken hostage once before, in Libya, but that time was released after 44 days. Undaunted, he went to Syria “determined to bear witness to the horrific bombings and gassings of innocent civilians by the Assad regime.” After he was taken hostage, the Foley family, to their deepening dismay, discovered that the U.S. refused unequivocally to negotiate for hostages’ release, and the Foleys were threatened with prosecution if they tried to raise ransom money on their own. Meanwhile, though, through “an incredibly circuitous route,” several European governments managed to free their own hostages. “They insinuated themselves carefully into the communications system,” the authors write, “got under the umbrella of the emails, and forged their own secret methods that included a network of agents and ambassadors and, yes, even spies.” Foley vents her anger toward the many government officials who claimed they were powerless to help. “The plain fact of the matter is that we don’t care as much for our aid workers or our volunteer ambulance drivers or our journalists as we do for our military,” the authors assert. Foley and her family founded the James W. Foley Legacy Foundation to advocate for the freedom of those taken hostage or detained abroad, and she takes hope from recent legislation, most recently by Biden’s executive order, in support of hostages. Hoping for “answers to help her in the wider work against hostage-taking,” Foley met with one of the terrorists involved in her son’s murder—unsettling encounters that bracket the striking narrative.
A harrowing memoir of grief and love.Pub Date: March 5, 2024
ISBN: 9798985882452
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Etruscan Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 17, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2024
SEEN & HEARD
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