Terrifying, engrossing, inspirational and surprisingly funny.
Former Philadelphia Inquirer and Miami Herald reporter Capuzzo (Close to Shore: A True Story of Terror in an Age of Innocence, 2001, etc.) reveals the inner workings of the mysterious Vidocq Society, a team of celebrated forensic investigators that regularly meets to tackle unsolved murder cases that have stymied conventional homicide-detection techniques.
The heart of the Society consists of William Fleisher, an avuncular former federal agent with a gift for networking; Richard Walter, a prickly and brilliant profiler obsessed with plumbing the depths of the murderous mind; and Frank Bender, a master forensic sculptor of seemingly supernatural talents. These men and their cohorts have proven a devastatingly effective team, solving scores of seemingly hopeless cold cases through a combination of experience, dogged passion for justice and shared sets of obscure and highly specialized skills. The book intrigues and disgusts in equal measure with its graphically detailed descriptions of the most depraved murders imaginable, and the material might be unbearable without the fantastic successes of the brilliant detectives who bring the malefactors to justice. Bender and Walter are an irresistibly entertaining team. The cadaverous, supercilious Walter, chain-smoking in ascetic contemplation in his Victorian manse, contrasts deliciously with Bender, a voluble, compulsive womanizer who balances a hedonistic approach to life with an uncanny instinct for accurately visualizing complete, detailed faces based on the slimmest fragments of forensic evidence. The case of John List, an upright churchgoer who murdered his entire family before disappearing for some 18 years, demonstrates the weird and potent chemistry shared by the sleuths. Walter developed a startlingly accurate profile of List, determining the area in which he was hiding, the work he did, the car he drove and his manner of dress. Bender created a bust depicting the changes to List’s appearance that had occurred during the intervening years. Both men were dead on the money, and List was caught—but the Vidocq members couldn’t stop sniping over whose idea it had been to add heavy horn-rim glasses to the bust. With these men, the details are everything.
Terrifying, engrossing, inspirational and surprisingly funny.Pub Date: Aug. 10, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-592-40142-0
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Gotham Books
Review Posted Online: June 3, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2010
A murdered Yale student and a 15-year-old New Haven gangbanger charged with the crime are the principals in this passionate, self- consciously empathetic account of the clash between poverty and privilege. Once again Douglas (Class: The Wreckage of an American Family, 1992) delves beneath surface appearances and easy stereotypes to fashion social history from family turmoil. The media glare focused on the 1991 murder cast the boys as stark opposites. Christian Prince, a white fourth-generation Yalie, son of a Chevy Chase, Md., lawyer, was an all-American athlete and vice president of his boarding school class. James ``Dunc'' Fleming, a black member of the 'Ville posse and reputed drug dealer, sported bullet wounds in both legs from a drive-by shooting. Though obviously more familiar with the suburbs of the Princes than the urban battleground the Flemings call home, Douglas spends time with each family, sharing (and dutifully reporting) their pain. He strains to draw parallels between the boys: ``The one's posse was the other's Yale'' is the most convincing. Both the death of Christian Prince and the life of the accused—and ultimately acquitted—Dunc Fleming are portrayed, justifiably, as tragedy. Douglas rejects journalistic objectivity as ``a smug fiction,'' but his emotional involvement in the story and his indulgence in direct address (to the reader, to the dead boy) edge his narrative uncomfortably close to bathos. The book is most powerful when he steps aside and lets family and community members talk. The case worker, the victim's advocate, the school principal, and the drug dealer speak with the authority and rage of experience. They clearly communicate that if underclass youth are to say no to drugs and violence, as privileged America demands, they must be given something to say yes to. Part voyeuristic melodrama, part bleak, unstinting portrait of a society so rotted with fundamental inequity and division that rapprochement seems impossible. (b&w photos, not seen).
Pub Date: Jan. 9, 1995
ISBN: 0-8050-2686-X
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1994
A shattering real-life Hand That Rocks the Cradle account, by veteran true-crime writer Egginton (Day of Fury, 1991, etc.). The facts of this grisly case are still fresh in our collective memory: On December 11, 1991, three-month-old Kristie Fischer was incinerated in her infant seat as her Westchester, N.Y., home was set ablaze. The baby's nanny, an oddly impassive 20- year-old Swiss au pair named Olivia Riner, was immediately charged with arson and murder. Olivia became a tabloid celebrity as her telegenic lawyer, Laura Brevetti, took her case to the TV cameras on a nightly basis, leaking deceptive videotapes and dropping hints that two members of the Fischer family were responsible for the baby's death. Olivia was eventually acquitted, thanks to the borderline-unethical tactics of Brevetti, slipshod work by an underfunded police department, and a lame courtroom performance by the Westchester DA. The author confides that she began her research convinced of Olivia's innocence, but ``in the painstaking process of probing and unravelling, a different set of truths emerged.'' Egginton persuasively details a slew of circumstantial evidence suggesting Olivia's guilt, including her singed eyelashes, her failure to attempt to rescue Kristie, her indifference to the baby's fate after the fire, and her conflicting accounts of her actions before the fire. Egginton even hazards a surprising guess as to Olivia's motive for the crime (based on a study of 19th- century nannies performed by philosopher Karl Jaspers when he was a medical student): homesickness for Switzerland. This searing study of justice miscarried compassionately portrays the Fischer family struggling to deal with a horrific crime, the media, and a legal system that would ultimately betray them. The author asks some big questions, one of which will ring especially loudly in the ears of 10 million working women with children: ``How well does any mother truly know her nanny?'' Deeply disturbing and utterly convincing.
Pub Date: Dec. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-688-10564-5
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1994
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