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
Riveting and exquisitely crafted.
Musician, poet and visual artist Smith (Trois, 2008, etc.) chronicles her intense life with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe during the 1960s and ’70s, when both artists came of age in downtown New York.
Both born in 1946, Smith and Mapplethorpe would become widely celebrated—she for merging poetry with rock ’n’ roll in her punk-rock performances, he as the photographer who brought pornography into the realm of art. Upon meeting in the summer of 1967, they were hungry, lonely and gifted youths struggling to find their way and their art. Smith, a gangly loser and college dropout, had attended Bible school in New Jersey where she took solace in the poetry of Rimbaud. Mapplethorpe, a former altar boy turned LSD user, had grown up in middle-class Long Island. Writing with wonderful immediacy, Smith tells the affecting story of their entwined young lives as lovers, friends and muses to one another. Eating day-old bread and stew in dumpy East Village apartments, they forged fierce bonds as soul mates who were at their happiest when working together. To make money Smith clerked in bookstores, and Mapplethorpe hustled on 42nd Street. The author colorfully evokes their days at the shabbily elegant Hotel Chelsea, late nights at Max’s Kansas City and their growth and early celebrity as artists, with Smith winning initial serious attention at a St. Mark’s Poetry Project reading and Mapplethorpe attracting lovers and patrons who catapulted him into the arms of high society. The book abounds with stories about friends, including Allen Ginsberg, Janis Joplin, William Burroughs, Sam Shepard, Gregory Corso and other luminaries, and it reveals Smith’s affection for the city—the “gritty innocence” of the couple’s beloved Coney Island, the “open atmosphere” and “simple freedom” of Washington Square. Despite separations, the duo remained friends until Mapplethorpe’s death in 1989. “Nobody sees as we do, Patti,” he once told her.
Riveting and exquisitely crafted.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-06-621131-2
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
While the author may attempt to mirror this ideal, the result is less than satisfying and more than a little irritating.
A disjointed debut memoir about how competitive swimming shaped the personal and artistic sensibilities of a respected illustrator.
Through a series of vignettes, paintings and photographs that often have no sequential relationship to each other, Shapton (The Native Trees of Canada, 2010, etc.) depicts her intense relationship to all aspects of swimming: pools, water, races and even bathing suits. The author trained competitively throughout her adolescence, yet however much she loved racing, “the idea of fastest, of number one, of the Olympics, didn’t motivate me.” In 1988 and again in 1992, she qualified for the Olympic trials but never went further. Soon afterward, Shapton gave up competition, but she never quite ended her relationship to swimming. Almost 20 years later, she writes, “I dream about swimming at least three nights a week.” Her recollections are equally saturated with stories that somehow involve the act of swimming. When she speaks of her family, it is less in terms of who they are as individuals and more in context of how they were involved in her life as a competitive swimmer. When she describes her adult life—which she often reveals in disconnected fragments—it is in ways that sometimes seem totally random. If she remembers the day before her wedding, for example, it is because she couldn't find a bathing suit to wear in her hotel pool. Her watery obsession also defines her view of her chosen profession, art. At one point, Shapton recalls a documentary about Olympian Michael Phelps and draws the parallel that art, like great athleticism, is as “serene in aspect” as it is “incomprehensible.”
While the author may attempt to mirror this ideal, the result is less than satisfying and more than a little irritating.Pub Date: July 5, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-399-15817-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Blue Rider Press
Review Posted Online: May 6, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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