Sluggish rendering of a bizarre Texas murder case, complete with she-devil villainess. Englade (A Family Business, 1992, etc.) shuffles the usual suspects and motivations here (greed, a woman scorned, etc.). In 1983, he tells us, one Joy Aylor (a.k.a. Jodie Packer, Leigh Curry, Stephanie Grimes, etc.) discovered that her husband, Larry (owner of a successful Dallas house-building firm), had been sleeping with beautiful, young Rozanne Borghi Gailiunas—the wife of family friend Peter Gailiunas, a successful Dallas physician. Joy put out a contract on Rozanne and soon the woman was found naked, tied to bedposts, shot, strangled, and very dead. It took the cops five years to nail the killer: The man whom Joy contracted to do the deed—Dallas auto-mechanic Brian Lee Kreafle—had, it seems, subcontracted the killing to one Andy Hopper, manager of an auto- body shop. When finally caught, Hopper confessed and was convicted of capital murder. Meanwhile, in 1986, Joy shelled out $12,000 to have Larry murdered because he was now sleeping with her younger sister. The attempted hit failed, although three .22 bullets went through the cab of Larry's truck, one hitting a friend in the elbow. Finally, in 1991, Joy, who fled the country, was snagged in the south of France. Today, she awaits trial in Texas on conspiracy charges. So overcomplicated that Englade includes a dramatis personae and a ``Chronology of Major Events''—but readers may still get lost wending through his labyrinthine, lackluster account. (Eight pages of b&w photographs)
Pub Date: Nov. 26, 1993
ISBN: 0-312-09924-X
Page Count: 368
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1993
BOOK REVIEW
A blistering jeremiad that gives new vibrancy to the political clichÇ that Washington is out of touch with the average American. At first glance, it would seem that any book rehashing this idea, even calling for a Jeffersonian-style electoral revolution, is hardly onto anything new. But Phillips (The Politics of Rich and Poor, 1990) is a brilliant reader of the political tea leaves; this seasoned Washington observer more than compensates for boiler-plate populism with a steady accretion of detail and provocative historical comparisons. For instance, he not only notes how parasitic the Beltway has become, but catalogues it with alarming data: the capital is overrun, he states, by 40,00050,000 lawyers, 90,000 lobbyists, a Congressional staff of 20,000, and 12,000 journalists. Phillips also finds novel examples of ``the capital's intermingling of public service, loose money, vocational incest, overinflated salaries, and ethical flexibility.'' One instance is what he calls ``loophole nepotism,'' the congressional practice of putting relatives on a colleague's payroll. Former assets of the American tradition have become liabilities, he thinks, including a separation of powers that discourages cooperation and responsibility, and a labyrinthine framework with 83,000 state, county, and city government subdivisions. Moreover, the government's inability to regulate electronic financial speculation has exposed the middle class to the decline of the manufacturing sector and even white-collar downsizing. Neither Democrats nor Republicans are willing to reform the mess since they feed at the special-interest trough. Phillips draws useful parallels with three capitals once afflicted with unproductive hangers-on: Madrid in the 1590s, the Hague in the 1690s, and London in the 1890s. He calls for reform measures ranging from the quixotic (periodically moving Congress out of the capital) to the sensible (the elimination of incentives for lawyers and lobbyists). Unusually wise to the dodges of Washington's rich and powerful. (Author tour)
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1994
ISBN: 0-316-70618-3
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1994
Retired FBI agent Ressler, who again teams up with Schactman (Whoever Fights Monsters, 1992), reveals here that modern American justice is served very, very slowly. When Ressler moved to the Cleveland office in 1974, he was handed an ``old dog,'' FBI slang for a hard case to close. Cleveland's king of X-rated motels, Owen Kilbane, was suspected of violating racketeering laws by moving his prostitutes between states. But Ressler was less interested in the prostitution ring than in Kilbane's lawyer, Robert Steele. Five years earlier, Steele's wife had been shot dead in her suburban home while she slept. Almost immediately, the police had suspected Steele, then a prominent judge who'd been having an affair and was known to have inquired about finding someone to murder his wife. Steele resigned from the bench when details of his adultery emerged, but no witnesses came forward, and because of a celebrated case in which the conviction of a doctor for killing his wife had recently been overturned on appeal, the police hesitated to push for an indictment without iron-clad evidence. Gradually, Ressler gathered information about Kilbane's criminal activities and cultivated informants. With tips from disgruntled prostitutes and a confession from the shooter, who was jailed for another murder, Ressler built a case. After three years of dogged pursuit, Kilbane and his brother Martin, as well as Steele were convicted of arranging Marlene Steele's murder. The problem here is that, while Ressler's detailed account of his pursuit is the sign of a dedicated agent, it's not necessarily the sign of a good writer. This reads like a case file—a litany of details spiced with pinches of bravado but without any real surprises. The moral of this true crime tale is, if there's a will, there's a way, which may be needed encouragement for readers plowing through Justice Is Served.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-312-11295-5
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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