THE MA & PA MURDERS: And Other Perfect Crimes
By
A very mixed bag of crimes--the weakest being the unsolved murder of Serge Rubinstein, stale as gossip and otherwise insignificant. The Brooklyn Museum robbery of 1933 and the abduction of Charley Ross in 1874, which ushered in the modern era of child kidnappings, are more instructive as prototypes of criminal specialities, and the recaps of Lizzie Borden's 40-minus whacks and the international missing persons alert for Peking Man are at least entertaining. Solomon adopts a flip, feature-writer tone, affecting dismay at the failures of police, but never offering any solutions or insightful speculation of his own.