A slight change from his two similar New Centurion-Blue Knight novels — a burly story of crime and punishment in which, dead or alive, all are victims of the same slugs with which two sociopaths kill one policeman but leave his partner to face another kind of destruction. Greg Powell is a homosexual and the bad result of his parents, particularly his mother; Jimmy Smith, a black, a junkie, survives a worse background, primarily on the streets, and the two of them are stopped on the road because there are no lights on their license plate. Lifting the guns of police officers Ian Campbell and Karl Hettinger, they shoot Campbell and Hettinger barely gets away from the onion field where Campbell lies. Both are brought to trial but during the long weeks and years ahead — seven including the appeals — Karl deteriorates, sweats out his guilt night after night, begins to shoplift, loses his job and becomes virtually dead to the world he has withdrawn from. . . . This takes place in the early '60's when a cop was still a cop and even if Wambaugh has given up the shambling Wallace Beery prototype he's used before, he's still retained his hard-mouthed, softhearted approach to those who face each other on either side of the law reaching for a gun. Nothing if not readable which is enough for his constituency.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1973
ISBN: 0385341598
Page Count: 509
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: April 11, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1973
IN THE NEWS
Overly detailed characterizations encumber an otherwise tension-filled tale of crime and punishment.
A murder investigation becomes a large-scale assault on drug gangs in this painstaking first book by New York City journalist Stone.
When a college boy from Tarrytown, New York, was inexplicably shot to death on Manhattan's West Side Highway in 1991, no one believed the murder would be solved. The first tip came six months into the investigation, after detectives Garry Dugan and Mark Tebbens traced several multiple homicides to the "Wild Cowboys"—a lawless Dominican gang from Washington Heights. Selling drugs and guns for profits as high as $30,000 a week, they had turned their neighborhood into a war zone. They bullied children into delivering contraband and killed anyone who got in their way—even those who just happened across their path. The ensuing investigation, one of the largest in New York's history, inspired the formation of the elite Homicide Investigation Unit, headed by Walter Arsenault. This team of prosecutors and detectives shared a passion for justice, yet it succumbed to personality clashes that further complicated an already difficult job. The strained team dynamic during this crucial case raises the stakes in an escalating story of how nine gang members are finally prosecuted for conspiracy via an unprecedented cooperation of DAs from Manhattan, Brooklyn, and the Bronx. Making arrests was a dangerous task, as was the job of keeping timid witnesses from recanting. Yet piecing together effective testimony through a web of tenuous deals, pleadings, and promises could mean solving 37 homicides—including that of the Tarrytown boy. It would also clear the Cowboys from the streets and send a powerful message to other gangs who believed they could get away with murder.
Overly detailed characterizations encumber an otherwise tension-filled tale of crime and punishment.Pub Date: Sept. 19, 2000
ISBN: 0-385-48972-2
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2000
Fans of true crime may be satisfied by this jumbo assortment of cases, but those interested in the development of forensic...
A hodgepodge of 32 brief accounts of murder trials that purports to represent milestones in the history of forensic science—presented, however, in an order that has no discernible rhyme or reason.
British journalist Wilkes has culled his selections primarily from accounts by true-crime writers in Great Britain and (with three exceptions) has limited himself to 20th-century crimes. Presented first is the most recent case, a 1985 trial in which forensic evidence did not provide conclusive proof of the murderer’s identity—chosen perhaps to show that science has a way to go in its battle with crime. A 1752 case is cited as the first on record in which scientific proof of poisoning was presented at a murder trial. Other cases illustrate the first use of fingerprinting in a murder trial (1905), the first forensic analysis of ink (1907), and the first use of an Identikit to construct a picture of a suspect’s face (1961). Several cases feature identification of dentures, dental work, or tooth marks, and reconstruction of mutilated bodies and severed heads. Especially fascinating is a 1964 case, written by the government pathologist involved, in which his expert testimony about the life cycle of bluebottle maggots established the time of death and destroyed the murderer’s alibi. Two murder cases involve mass screenings: the 1948 fingerprinting of the entire male population of Blackburn, England, foreshadowed the 1987 collection of DNA samples from all young males in three English villages in Leicestershire. Inexplicably, Wilkes places the DNA case early in his collection and the fingerprinting case near the end.
Fans of true crime may be satisfied by this jumbo assortment of cases, but those interested in the development of forensic science will find it a frustrating jumble of anecdotes.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-7867-0789-0
Page Count: 542
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2000
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