The 1978 Scottsdale, Arizona, murder of the star of the long- running TV sitcom Hogan's Heroes is reviewed in infinite detail here by Graysmith, who did the same job for a series of 70's and 80's rape-murders in San Francisco (The Sleeping Lady, 1990). In his opening chapters, leading up to Bob Crane's murder, Graysmith retells every date and sexual activity the star engaged in—whether or not they had anything to do with his death. Going by what we have here, much of Graysmith's superfine detail is superfluous as evidence, though it does render the victim's character. This density of fact, however, veils the weakness of the author's approach, which hangs upon circumstantial evidence and what after 14 years may become hard evidence by way of new forensic techniques in sampling DNA specimens and minute bits of blood and fatty brain tissue. Crane was living on reruns and a kind of supper-club-circuit play he was taking around the country when he befriended an overweight electronics salesman, John Carpenter, who consistently failed to score on double-dates with Crane even while Crane scored daily, if not twice daily, taking Polaroids and videos of his romps. Then the actor was found in bed with his head battered in by a blunt object. Scottsdale investigators finally linked Carpenter to the murder, but the state could find neither weapon, witness, nor motive and so failed to prosecute. But detectives refused to close the case, and Carpenter—who in the interim had entered a plea bargain in L.A. for molesting female minors—recently was arraigned for the killing. Gruesomely sexy but not a provocative read. (Eight pages of photos, 23 line drawings).
Pub Date: June 2, 1993
ISBN: 0-517-59209-6
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1993
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Soviet spy Kim Philby, discreet to the last, speaks at length here about his career without saying much new, but his KGB file is more revealing. Soviet journalist Borovik, with the assistance of the experienced British newspaperman Knightley (The Master Spy: The Story of Kim Philby, 1989), had the good idea (actually suggested to him by Graham Greene) of juxtaposing extensive taped interviews with Philby during his last years in Moscow with the spy's KGB file, which was made available to Borovik after Philby's death in 1988. This is particularly fruitful for the first part of Philby's career, since for some unexplained reason the file does not continue beyond the early years of WW II, after which Philby's recollections, mostly repetitive of his own book, are supplemented by the recollections of a former KGB agent in London who didn't work with Philby at all. The main revelation to come out of the KGB files is that Philby was recruited, not as part of a clever plot to seed the British bureaucracy with able young sympathizers, but because the KGB incorrectly believed that Philby's father was in British intelligence and that Philby could pick his brains. Another striking feature is the suspicion with which Philby was regarded by the KGB, seemingly throughout his career. A final surprise is the apparent insouciance with which the KGB wrecked Philby's career, allowing him to be compromised by Guy Burgess's flight to Moscow. Philby himself believed that he could have had another ten years in position if it had not been for this mistake. (See also Treason in the Blood by Anthony Cave Brown, reviewed on p. 1323.) Some good new material on an eternally intriguing subject, marred by the unexplained absence of later KGB material and the author's readiness to embellish his tapes of Philby with lengthy conversations reconstructed from what he thinks may have occurred.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-316-10284-9
Page Count: 408
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1994
The tale has been told many times, the theories get ever more intricate, but Canute himself could not still the waves of interest in British spy Kim Philby and what author Brown (Bodyguard of Lies, 1975) calls with some justice ``the spy case of the century.'' This book's new wrinkle is that it's a dual biography of Kim and his father, the formidable H. St. John Philby, who was not only a great Arabist and traveler (he crossed Arabia's fearful Empty Quarter), but was almost as puzzling a figure as his son. This one- time employee of the Raj was also an atheist, an anti-imperialist, and a socialist; interned for sympathizing with the Nazis during WW II, he became a communist at the end of his life. Clearly an ornery customer, but, though Brown quotes a KGB spokesman in 1991 calling St. John a ``Soviet asset,'' it is hard to conclude that he was a traitor, and he would certainly have denied it hotly. By contrast, Brown goes fully into the dispute that rages as to where the son's ultimate loyalties lay; in terms of the results—agents captured, missions gone wrong, secrets apparently lost, his ultimate 25-year stay in Moscow—it is hard to conclude that Kim was anything other than the servant of Communism that he claimed to be, a spy so successful that he penetrated to the highest reaches of the British Secret Service and, in Brown's view, made mincemeat out of the CIA into the bargain. (See also The Philby Files by Genrikh Borovik, reviewed on p. 1322.) A judicious summary of the evidence and a riveting account of two extraordinary characters, with all the elements, in John le CarrÇ's words, ``of a great novel, and an unfinished one at that.''
Pub Date: Dec. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-395-63119-X
Page Count: 688
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
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