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LOVERS OF DECEIT

Name: LOVERS OF DECEIT
Author: Mike Gallagher
ISBN: 0-385-41684-9

CAROLYN WARMUS AND THE 'FATAL ATTRACTION' MURDER

by Mike Gallagher ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 1993

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A convoluted, behind-the-scenes look at the Westchester County murder case that titillated tabloid readers with its purported parallels to the Hollywood shocker Fatal Attraction. Told by a reporter who covered the case for the Westchester Gannett newspaper chain, this overextended narrative features a trio of adulterers, an heiress-turned-murderer, shady p.i.s, and cops of staggering incompetence: sleaze and slapstick in the suburbs. In the late 80's, 25-year-old Carolyn Warmus, a computer instructor in Pleasantville, New York, was engaged in a torrid affair with married fellow-teacher Paul Solomon—whose wife, Betty Jeanne, was also having an affair. Despite having slept with several married men, Warmus became obsessed with Solomon and talked continually of marrying him—but he sidestepped commitment. When, in January 1989, Betty Jeanne was shot dead while home alone, suspicion centered on her husband, whose alibi was quickly proved false—at the time of the death, he actually had been on his way to a steamy rendezvous with Warmus. A report eventually surfaced that Warmus had recently purchased a handgun and silencer from a tawdry p.i. she'd hired to track another lover, but the gun was never found and the police investigation dragged on. Meanwhile, Solomon avoided Warmus and, less than six months after his wife's death, took up with another woman. Warmus lost control, dogging Solomon and his new love to Puerto Rico and harassing friends and relatives of the pair with threatening phone calls. Finally, Warmus was charged with Betty Jeanne's murder, largely on circumstantial evidence. The first trial ended in a hung jury but, in a retrial, the accused was found guilty. She's now serving a 25-year-to-life sentence. Overly detailed with legal technicalities, and the portrait of the spoiled and sociopathic Warmus remains vague and uninflected. Of interest, then, mostly for its revelations about police fumbling of the case. (Eight pages of b&w photographs—not seen)

Pub Date: June 1, 1993

ISBN: 0-385-41684-9

Page Count: 416

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1993

Categories:

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006

Well-told and admonitory.

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Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.

Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.

Well-told and admonitory.

Pub Date: June 1, 2006

ISBN: 0-06-074486-3

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS

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INTO THE WILD

by Jon Krakauer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1996

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...

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The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).

Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor will it to readers of Krakauer's narrative. (4 maps) (First printing of 35,000; author tour)