More of the gory details from the former FBI profiler who coined the phrase ``serial killer.'' Among the other murderers he examines here, Ressler continues from Whoever Fights Monsters (1992) his discussion on John Wayne Gacy and includes new information on Jeffrey Dahmer. He reconstructs his interviews with the two; they're tough going, yet fascinating: Both men express having experienced real surprise when they—as they put it—``[woke] up next to a dead guy,'' and both insist that they don't remember what really happened. Gacy even asserts that his construction crew did most of the killings. But it's clear they do remember, and Ressler, a master of the interview, gets them to admit exactly what they did (for the tenacious, strong-stomached reader only) and, less clearly, why. Ressler is not so much interested in what made these men start killing as in the origins of the feelings of exuberance and omnipotence that wouldn't let them stop. He clearly and persuasively outlines the beginning of Dahmer's and Gacy's careers as killers, but does not provide an adequate explanation as to why these men, suffering deeply from anomie, killed others rather than commit suicide. Ressler's understanding of his subjects, however, is genuine, and he creates convincing portraits of them as evil, cruel, yet somehow pitiable. While the book also deals with some international cases (South Africa's ABC Murders, the Wimbledon Commons murder in England, the Aum cult in Japan), it's obvious that Ressler's heart—and massive ego—belongs to American killers, who started the whole serial-killer industry in the first place. A disturbing catalog of facts lacking a strong context but terribly jarring just the same. (Author tour)
Pub Date: June 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-312-15552-2
Page Count: 240
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1997
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A psychiatrist who meets the criminally insane tells all. Lewis, a professor at New York University and Yale, spends a good deal of time examining the most violent among us. Her specialty is violent children, but over the years she has also met with adults. Her subjects include Arthur Shawcross, who mutilated and ate his victims, and Ted Bundy, who kissed her goodbye shortly before his execution. Lewis has clearly seen and heard a great deal, and she’s unsparing in the details of what makes a child violent. As expected, she finds that poverty and abuse are strong indicators of a tendency toward violence, and she writes movingly of one little girl who became a murderer after her family repeatedly ignored her cries for help. Not every child in those situations becomes a law-breaker, but years of abuse combined with inattentive medical care can lead to serious behavioral problems and terrible violence. Lewis early on makes the point that she has often identified more with a killer waiting to be executed than with society, which she believes makes her more sensitive to those who kill. This approach has limited appeal, however, and the book often veers between overly long sections on Lewis’s background and and relationships with colleagues and her parents, and too little real analysis. The reader is left with excellent insights into Lewis’s own modus operandi, but not much in the way of a true understanding of what makes an abused child turn into a Ted Bundy. Like Barbara Kirwin’s The Mad, The Bad, and The Innocent, this book focuses too much on the analyst. (Author tour)
Pub Date: April 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-449-00277-2
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
Yes, Deborah, there once were Jewish murderers who were part of organized crime in America. The story of their time, and especially of the syndicate known as Murder, Inc., based largely in Brownsville, Brooklyn, is told in this breezily anecdotal work. Cohen, a contributing editor at Rolling Stone, focuses almost exclusively on New York from 1918 to 1945. He deftly portrays the personalities and the bloody deeds of such figures as Arnold Rothstein (who, contrary to myth and his fictional representation in The Great Gatsby, did not “fix” the 1919 World Series) and the killers Abe (“Kid Twist”) Reles and Louis Lepke. Drawing on interviews, archival research, and secondary sources, Cohen has done his homework, although he makes no reference to Jenna Weissman Joselit’s equally interesting if more scholarly Our Gang: Jewish Crime and the New York Jewish Community, 1900—1940. His book is filled with engrossing, vivid, violent anecdotes, and he is a fine teller of dark tales. Unfortunately, Cohen’s style sometimes yields flippant, hyperbolic claims, as in “The boys [of Murder, Inc.] had developed a system of killing as groundbreaking, as effective, as influential, as Henry Ford’s assembly line.” However, he does succeed admirably in explaining why even law-abiding Jewish men, including the author’s father and his friends, were fascinated by Jewish criminals, who defied the often tedious 9-to-5 work world and provided a countermyth to the Jew as victim. He also provides a satisfactory explanation as to why, for Jewish-Americans, violent crime was largely a one-generation phenomenon: By the postwar period, Jews had achieved enough upward mobility so that even criminal fathers encouraged their sons to “make it” in the professions and through legitimate businesses. For those who want to know about the dark underside of American Jewish life two and three generations ago, Cohen’s book, is a good place to begin. (16 pages b&w photos, not seen) (First serial to Rolling Stone; author tour)
Pub Date: April 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-684-83115-5
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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