Mostly forsaking sensationalism for plodding detail, Fuhrman disappoints: this is only for people interested in the tedious...
The grisly account of a Spokane, Washington, serial killer’s spree, and a critique of the local police department’s investigation of the crimes.
On October 19, 2000, Robert Yates pled guilty to the murder of 13 women. According to detective-turned-journalist Fuhrman (Murder in Greenwich, not reviewed), the killer could have been apprehended two years earlier. The author traces the Yates case as it unfolds through the late 1990s. He may have left police work for journalism and a ranch in Idaho, but he was anything but a disinterested citizen when dead women began appearing at various dumping sites in the Spokane area. In fact, Fuhrman and his colleague, radio co-host Mark Fitzsimmons, began to explore the murders themselves. The author presents a detailed diary of their investigations, laying out a blow-by-blow recounting of each body’s discovery, the atmosphere of the crime scenes, and the possible thoughts of the killer. At the same time, Fuhrman documents the Spokane police department’s reluctant handling of the case, its insularity, and its refusal to release substantive details to the public. Indeed, for a long while, the department refused even to acknowledge the existence of a serial killer. In his unofficial search, the author repeatedly turned up witnesses who were never questioned and leads that were never followed. He concludes with a close analysis of the arrest affidavit, substantiating his allegation that the department could have caught the culprit years earlier if they had relied less on their computer database and DNA testing, and more on investigating phoned-in leads with basic police work. Although he claims that “the last thing [he] wanted to do was second guess them,” Fuhrman has little patience with the Spokane police; his tone is that of an indignant everyman wondering what the clowns in uniform were doing.
Mostly forsaking sensationalism for plodding detail, Fuhrman disappoints: this is only for people interested in the tedious nitty-gritty of apprehending a killer.Pub Date: June 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-06-019437-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A fast-paced account, bloody and suspenseful, of a defining event in the history of the New Left. On August 21, 1971, the radical writer (Soledad Brother) and Black Panther leader George Jackson tried to shoot his way out of San Quentin Prison, where he had been jailed on a murder charge. Jackson died; so did three guards and two other inmates. The breakout attempt had been carefully planned, writes Bay Area journalist Liberatore, but no one could foresee its reverberations. One man whose life was forever altered was Jackson's white attorney Stephen Bingham, ``blue-blooded, reared in wealth and privilege,'' who had come to embrace Jackson's goals of a unified political struggle. (``When the races start fighting,'' Jackson had written, ``all you have is one maniac group against the other. That's just what the pigs want.'') After Jackson's death Bingham went underground, a wanted man for his supposed role in smuggling a pistol for Jackson into the prison; he resurfaced a dozen years later and defended himself in a dramatic, emotional trial whose recounting occupies the last part of the book. Liberatore traces the evolution of Jackson and Bingham's political thought through the tumultuous years of Vietnam and the civil-rights struggle, and his portrait of the ever-changing New Left will fascinate those too young to remember times full of what a San Quentin official aptly called ``bullshit talk by dilettante revolutionaries.'' While clearly admiring Jackson and Bingham for the strength of their convictions, Liberatore is no hero-worshiper; neither does he entertain radical-chic nostalgia for an era whose wounds are still fresh. Published to coincide with the 25th anniversary of the attempted breakout, Liberatore's chronicle adds considerably to our understanding of that time of trouble.
Pub Date: Aug. 22, 1996
ISBN: 0-87113-647-3
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1996
None
This memoir of a childhood acquaintance who became a peripheral casualty of social turmoil is affecting despite a curious remoteness. Loizeaux (Anna: A Daughter's Life, 1993) revisits the suburban New Jersey of his childhood to exhume the story of a charismatic schoolmate of mixed race, William ``Rabbit'' Wells, mistakenly shot and killed by a young police officer, William Sorgie, in 1973. This account of Wells's life and death is indisputably a structural marvel, nimbly flitting back and forth in time in a way that should be confusing but isn't, thanks to his unfailingly clear prose and his eye for the detail that instantly impresses a scene on the mind. Piecing together a fragmented image of Wells—and, much less distinctly, the still-living Sorgie—Loizeaux flirts again and again with the circumstances of Jan. 13, 1973, but leaves the heart of the matter to a powerful climactic narrative. But while precise, Loizeaux's style also exhibits a sort of contrived-sounding hauntedness. For despite apposite autobiographical touches, the book doesn't really establish the source of the author's depth of feeling for Wells, as manifested in sometimes almost incantatory writing and heavy-handed symbolism. And while the transitory presence Wells had, even for those who became closest to him, understandably makes for a dearth of solid facts 25 years later, Loizeaux's rather flat novelistic reconstructions of speculative events become unwelcome as they mount up, repetitively signaled by phrases like ``I can imagine . . .'' or ``I suppose. . . .'' Ultimately, the wounds seem to have healed long ago (albeit with visible scar tissue) and been overtaken by broader upheavals. Thus, this story's power resides in its careful reckoning of a personal loss, not in the ``echoes of our national life''— Vietnam, urban rioting—that he perfunctorily refers to. Still, a quietly heroic rescue of a pointlessly stolen life, and an evocative snapshot of an extraordinary moment in an ordinary place.
None NonePub Date: Jan. 1, 1998
ISBN: 1-55970-380-6
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Arcade
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1997
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
