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THE MAUL AND THE PEAR TREE

Name: THE MAUL AND THE PEAR TREE
Author: T.A. Critchley
ISBN: 0446679216

THE RATCLIFFE HIGHWAY MURDERS, 1811

by T.A. Critchley & P.D. James ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 25, 1986

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A true tale of murder most foul in Regency London in which James' mystery-writing witchery is joined with Critchley's police history know-how. In December, 1811, seven members of two households were bludgeoned to death in the dock area of east London. The murders of Timothy Marr, his wife, 3(apple)-month-old baby and shopboy in Marr's Ratcliffe Highway drapery shop and second-floor lodgings sent a shockwave throughout England. Murder was rare at the time, especially within the sanctity of respect-able homes, and the death of an innocent babe raised specters of maniacal fiends stalking the blameless and unwary. The later massacre of John Williamson, his wife and female servant in their public house near Ratcliffe Highway fed rumors of a Popish Plot and impelled a terrified citizenry to arm themselves. Local authorities (there was no Metropolitan Police force at the time) had no idea how to proceed with a murder investigation. Rewards were posted, which netted droves of "suspects" fingered simply because they were Irish, foreign-born, had acted peculiarly, or had gotten bloodied in brawls. One of these was a good-looking, somewhat dandyish, sailor named John Williams, who had been drinking at Williamson's pub the night of the murder and who, when he returned to the nearby Pear Tree public house, had asked the man whose room he shared to blow out the candle (presumably to hide his bloody clothes). When it was learned that the maul (a ship carpenter's mallet) used in the Marr murders came from a tool chest stored at the Pear Tree, Williams became the prime suspect. While the authorities were assembling more (and mostly unconvincing) circumstantial evidence, Williams hanged himself in his solitary cell. After sifting through the available evidence, James and Critchley conclude that Williams was probably innocent; and, if guilty, had operated with an accomplice. They weigh the evidence against other more likely suspects and even consider the possibility of an innocent Williams being strangled, then hanged, by prison authorities. In this way, a besieged government could declare the case closed (sound familiar?) and a terrified and outraged populace could once more rest easy. This one's a winning combination: a spellbinding mystery replete with authentic historical minutiae, and a brooding, teeming early-19th-century locale.

Pub Date: March 25, 1986

ISBN: 0446679216

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Mysterious Press

Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1986

Categories:

TRUE CRIME

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O.J.: THE LAST WORD

by Gerry Spence ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 1997

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Buried under windbag sermonizing and lofty moralizing lies a cogent analysis of how the prosecution lost the O.J. Simpson case. Celebrated defense attorney Spence (The Making of a Country Lawyer, 1996, etc.) devotes the first half of his book to establishing his bona fides as a man of the people: a country bumpkin in a buckskin jacket, a lawyer who scorns lawyers (who he witheringly says lack ``personhood'') and idealizes jurors (simple folks drenched in the wisdom of life experience). Spence can also be wildly inconsistent, at one moment saying, for instance, that Faye Resnick's account has a ring of truth, at another labeling it ``swill.'' But despite arrogant lawyers and dishonest cops, the real villain for Spence is the media and its ``rape of the judicial process''—invading the courtroom, corrupting the lawyers by making them celebrities, and offering endless punditry by commentators who, Spence claims, know nothing about trying a case. Of course, he admits, he was a media pundit himself. Still, he is a leading trial attorney (whom Simpson had wanted on his defense team), and he scores some illuminating points on why Marcia Clark and Chris Darden failed to make their case to the jury—and outlines the case they could have made. Most chilling is his retelling of two incidents: First, the events of January 1, 1989, when police responded to a battered Nicole Simpson's call for help—O.J.'s escape that night paralleled his escape after Nicole's and Ron Goldman's murder. Even more eerie is another incident never presented at the criminal trial: Right before the murders, Simpson was filming a scene for a TV show that also strangely prefigured the murders and in which, playing a former SEAL, he could have learned the slashing technique used to kill his ex-wife and her friend. Spence believes that O.J. was guilty but that the jury's acquittal was just. If his brief were less self-righteous, his legitimate arguments would be easier to swallow. (Literary Guild selection)

Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1997

ISBN: 0-312-18009-8

Page Count: 256

Publisher: St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1997

Categories:

TRUE CRIME

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BLOODTHIRSTY BITCHES AND PIOUS PIMPS OF POWER
by Gerry Spence

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THE SMOKING GUN
by Gerry Spence

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HALF-MOON AND EMPTY STARS
by Gerry Spence

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CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE

DEATH, LIFE, AND JUSTICE IN A SMALL TOWN

by Pete Earley ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 1995

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Sex, prejudice, murder, and lies are the familiar hinges to this gripping investigation into the deaths of two Alabama teenagers. Earley (The Hot House, 1992, etc.) has perhaps written the right book at the wrong time. Though these events took place in the mid-1980s, the cold-blooded killing of a lovely white girl, the arrest of a black man who claims to have been across town at the time of the incident, lengthy judicial proceedings, and possible law enforcement bunglings and cover-ups cannot help but conjure the ghost of Nicole Brown Simpson. And that is unfortunate, since this story has many important lessons of its own. Two girls are killed in a short period of time, but the case involving the bad girl from the broken family gets little attention from the police. Earley, writing with a perfect journalistic temperament, records the actions of not only the stereotypically corrupt lawmen seeking quick answers and reelection, but of those who attempt to play by the book and help a black suspect in a town where it is still sociopolitical suicide for a white family to invite a black man home for supper. At the heart of this book is the question of truth and perspective. Over the course of seven years, the two murders are investigated and reinvestigated, suspects are arrested and released, lives are destroyed, questions go unanswered, and the county electric chair, nicknamed Yellow Mama, waits like a shark for a certain kind of justice to be carried out. In the profusion of protagonists and motives in an ultimately unsolved crime, a key witness in the drama says it all: ``What the hell is the truth? It is whatever damn well the person listening to you wants to hear.'' Death and capital punishment, southern style, and with all the trappings.