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THE SHARK NET

MEMORIES AND MURDER

Altogether unexpected and quite involving: a briskly paced summer read.

Such a strange literary amalgam: a Cold War-era youth memoir interpolated with a true-crime drama. Yet, as written by Drewe, it not only makes sense, but is also damnably compelling at that.

Quite popular and well respected "down under" as a novelist (The Drowner, 1997), Drewe stakes out new literary territory, telling of his progress from schoolboy to young newsman on the make. Set in the late 1950s and early 1960s against the remote backdrop of Perth (described by some as "the most isolated city in the world"), the story manages to cover a lot of ground, tying together several themes effortlessly: youthful superstition, adolescent longing, suburban conformity, the ongoing war between man and nature, the wonders of rubber products (really), etc. But bracketing the author's recollections of sun-dappled days at the beach, boozy, glad-handing get-togethers arranged by Drewe's dad, a successful Dunlop tire area manager, and the fear of "boiling brain" (a nonexistent affliction arising from prolonged bareheadedness under the relentless western Australian sun), is the forbidding shadow narrative of Eric Cooke. Fired from a menial job at the Dunlop factory, Cooke moves to the fringes of polite society. Hare-lipped, hot-tempered, and the young father of seven, Cooke turns out also to be a serial murderer who has been terrorizing the Perth area, killing a former school chum of Drewe's, among others. Drewe and Cooke come together, in a sense, when the former is an investigative reporter on the overnight crime beat. While these protagonists' dual paths are in no means parallel, and their meeting is, as the book's title suggests, inevitable, Drewe creates and maintains suspense by moving Cooke throughout the narrative in much the same stealthy fashion that Cooke moved through the underside of Perth. Drewe also fleshes out Cooke's character by creating a sympathetic portrait of the killer's wife, and lends some insight into why he turned "bad."

Altogether unexpected and quite involving: a briskly paced summer read.

Pub Date: July 1, 2000

ISBN: 0-670-88809-5

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Viking

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2000

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BETWEEN GOOD AND EVIL

A MASTER PROFILER’S HUNT FOR SOCIETY’S MOST VIOLENT PREDATORS

The collaborative prose here is workmanlike, while the combination of grisly crime story with Depue’s personal journey is...

Emotionally weighty memoir from one of the FBI’s original “profilers.”

Ironically, profilers like Depue have become contemporary pop-culture archetypes, thanks to the novels of Thomas Harris and the bestsellers by Depue’s former colleague, John Douglas. This grisly science, though, wasn’t on the horizon in Depue’s childhood, when his policeman father was known to keep order via strong hands and a sympathetic ear. After a typical “delinquent” adolescence, Depue saw stints in the Marines and as a small-town cop, experiences that later became his ticket away from the drudgery and casual violence of the Midwest, circa 1960. His innovations as a police chief of 26 in hardscrabble Claire, Michigan, made him an ideal candidate for FBI recruitment. The bureau was shedding the Hoover era’s intellectual myopia: younger agents like Depue perceived that the drugs and strife of the 1960s would lead to a spike in violent crime that needed to be countered proactively. Depue’s FBI career began in the Deep South, where he personally witnessed the injustices perpetrated by the Klan and their police sympathizers, an experience that prompted his early support of racial equality. Later, he moved to Washington and worked extortion, kidnapping, and fugitive cases. When his cohort at the bureau wondered how to predict the actions of child molesters, sexual sadists, serial killers, and other irredeemable types, the unit began interviewing offenders in custody, resulting in Depue’s surreal encounters with figures like Ed Kemper, an articulate, intelligent, 300-pound psychopath, or the glib and amoral Ted Bundy. Depue retired as head of the Behavioral Science Unit and started a private law-enforcement consulting firm that was called in on, among others, the JonBenet Ramsey and Columbine cases. When his wife died of cancer, he entered a seminary for several years and even worked with convicted felons, feeling an intense need to confront issues of good and evil in a different way from before.

The collaborative prose here is workmanlike, while the combination of grisly crime story with Depue’s personal journey is quite moving.

Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2005

ISBN: 0-446-53264-9

Page Count: 320

Publisher: N/A

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2004

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ALMOST PARADISE

THE EAST HAMPTON MURDER OF TED AMMON

Truly appalling all around: a story seemingly without goodness, except in the telling. (8-page b&w photo insert, not...

An in-depth investigation into the grisly murder of leveraged-buyout financier Ted Ammon, from New York Post reporter Crowley.

No need to pump up the material to give this story of vulgarity and murder epic proportions, and the author doesn’t, maintaining a steady keel throughout. Which is not to say that Crowley (The Surgeon’s Wife, etc., not reviewed) isn’t relentless in uncovering the protagonists’ sleazy doings. The miscreants include Ted Ammon, an arbitrageur who ruined many a life as he enriched a few (including himself); his shallow and snobbish socialite wife Generosa, sarcastic, arrogant, rude, and cheap with people in a way she would never be with objects; and ne’er-do-well Danny Pelosi, Generosa’s married lover. Each of three was the kind of person who touched other’s lives in all the wrong ways, but in Crowley’s estimation Generosa was queen of this nasty hill. The merest perceived slight would send her into a screaming fit, making even close friends cringe. When she discovered that Ted was having an affair, she gave him his walking papers and commenced secret surveillance of his home. But before the divorce could be finalized, he was beaten to death with a poker while Taser shocks were administered. (The surveillance equipment was removed by the killers.) Generosa had told her husband on more than one occasion, “I’ll have you killed,” and Pelosi owned a Taser. He got a quickie divorce and they got married shortly after Ted’s death. Yet Pelosi—who publicly commented of Generosa, “She’s wacko, but she’ll do anything for me”—was a relatively decent father to his kids and also good with her kids, the real victims of this story. After Generosa died of cancer, he was arrested for Ted’s murder, unconvincingly if this version is correct. Crowley writes in measured, albeit frightening terms, making no call, letting the facts and his investigative reporting speak for themselves.

Truly appalling all around: a story seemingly without goodness, except in the telling. (8-page b&w photo insert, not seen)

Pub Date: Jan. 4, 2005

ISBN: 0-312-34023-0

Page Count: 384

Publisher: St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2004

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