A taut, terrifying view of White supremacy taken to murderous extremes, now all too common.
Fast-paced tale of the search for a racist serial killer in the early days of criminal profiling.
As an FBI agent and instructor, Douglas largely invented the criminal profile, a branch of psychology of the sort that fuels TV shows like NCIS and Criminal Minds. He gained a reputation for ferreting out likely perpetrators by means of patterns. For example, when a young woman was murdered in the Georgia woods, he specified a subject in his 20s, with a military record ending in a dishonorable discharge, a smug attitude, a blue-collar trade, and a dark vehicle—the last because, he and Olshaker write, “I had observed that orderly, compulsive people tended to drive darker cars.” Bingo: He perfectly described a subject whom the Georgia police had just interviewed. These skills come into play when the narrative turns to the search for the virulently racist Joseph Paul Franklin, who targeted Jews, Black men, and, more pointedly, White women who dated the latter. Sometimes his victims were Black children, targets of opportunity. “Though it still wasn’t part of the cultural lexicon,” write the authors, “by then we were already using the phrase serial killer to reference a predatory offender who killed three or more victims at different times and places.” They found Franklin also was implicated in the shootings of Larry Flynt, who published pornographic images of interracial couples, and Vernon Jordan, the civil rights leader. Douglas and Olshaker carefully lay out the trail of evidence but come to unsettling conclusions. Although such killers are marked by a sense of powerlessness and alienation, the racist murderer at the heart of this book has also inspired other killers such as Dylann Roof. As the authors write about Franklin, “his unwavering dedication to fomenting hate made him a potential inspiration and symbol to others with similar orientation.”
A taut, terrifying view of White supremacy taken to murderous extremes, now all too common.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-297976-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Dey Street/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Oct. 21, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2020
An unflinching self-portrait.
The tumultuous life of a bisexual, autistic comic.
In her debut memoir, Scottish comedian Brady recounts the emotional turmoil of living with undiagnosed autism. “The public perception of autistics is so heavily based on the stereotype of men who love trains or science,” she writes, “that many women miss out on diagnosis and are thought of as studious instead.” She was nothing if not studious, obsessively focused on foreign languages, but she found it difficult to converse in her own language. From novels, she tried to gain “knowledge about people, about how they spoke to each other, learning turns of phrase and metaphor” that others found so familiar. Often frustrated and overwhelmed by sensory overload, she erupted in violent meltdowns. Her parents, dealing with behavior they didn’t understand—including self-cutting—sent her to “a high-security mental hospital” as a day patient. Even there, a diagnosis eluded her; she was not accurately diagnosed until she was 34. Although intimate friendships were difficult, she depicts her uninhibited sexuality and sometimes raucous affairs with both men and women. “I grew up confident about my queerness,” she writes, partly because of “autism’s lack of regard for social norms.” While at the University of Edinburgh, she supported herself as a stripper. “I liked that in a strip club men’s contempt of you was out in the open,” she admits. “In the outside world, misogyny was always hovering in your peripheral vision.” When she worked as a reporter for the university newspaper, she was assigned to try a stint as a stand-up comic and write about it; she found it was work she loved. After “about a thousand gigs in grim little pubs across England,” she landed an agent and embarked on a successful career. Although Brady hopes her memoir will “make things feel better for the next autistic or misfit girl,” her anger is as evident as her compassion.
An unflinching self-portrait.Pub Date: June 6, 2023
ISBN: 9780593582503
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Harmony
Review Posted Online: March 10, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2023
The choir is sure to enjoy this impassioned preaching on familiar progressive themes.
Essays on current political topics by a high-profile actor and activist.
Milano explains in an introduction that she began writing this uneven collection while dealing with a severe case of Covid-19 and suffering from "persistent brain fog.” In the first essay, "On Being Unapologetically Fucked Up,” the author begins by fuming over a February 2019 incident in which she compared MAGA caps worn by high school kids to KKK hoods. She then runs through a grab bag of flash-point news items (police shootings, border crimes, sexual predators in government), deploying the F-bomb with abandon and concluding, "What I know is that fucked up is as fundamental a state of the world as night and day. But I know there is better. I know that ‘less fucked up’ is a state we can live in.” The second essay, "Believe Women," discusses Milano’s seminal role in the MeToo movement; unfortunately, it is similarly conversational in tone and predictable in content. One of the few truly personal essays, "David," about the author's marriage, refutes the old saw about love meaning never having to say you're sorry, replacing it with "Love means you can suggest a national sex strike and your husband doesn't run away screaming." Milano assumes, perhaps rightly, that her audience is composed of followers and fans; perhaps these readers will know what she is talking about in the seemingly allegorical "By Any Other Name," about her bad experience with a certain rosebush. "Holy shit, giving birth sucked," begins one essay. "Words are weird, right?" begins the next. "Welp, this is going to piss some of you off. Hang in there," opens a screed about cancel culture—though she’s entirely correct that “it’s childish, divisive, conceited, and Trumpian to its core.” By the end, however, Milano's intelligence, compassion, integrity, and endurance somewhat compensate for her lack of literary polish.
The choir is sure to enjoy this impassioned preaching on familiar progressive themes.Pub Date: Oct. 26, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-18329-8
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2021
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