An engaging and thoroughly detailed true-crime narrative.
In this nonfiction work, Skillings investigates the case of a man who was convicted of murdering a child but has always maintained his innocence.
In October of 1973, in South Williamsport, Pennsylvania, 12-year-old Jennifer Hill’s corpse was found in a cornfield. On the day of her death, Jennifer left the house of her best friend, Ruthie Hubbard, but never made it home. Ruthie’s older brother, Kim Hubbard, then 20 years old, and his father, Joe, were both accused of the murder, though Kim quickly became the prime suspect. The murder case and the trial that followed seemed, according to the author, to be a farce. The rapidly shaped prosecutorial narrative pushed by the county District Attorney held that Jennifer was the victim of a perverted ne’er-do-well; while this is far from an atypical motive, Skillings asserts that the evidence simply does not point to Kim Hubbard being the perpetrator. The author discusses the many oddities regarding the handling of the case, including the augmentation of the prosecution’s key witness’s testimony via hypnotism, the fact that the crime scene photo of Jennifer strangely contained an embalming instrument, and discrepancies in the expected rate of decomposition. Skillings takes great pains to explore the ways in which the case emotionally impacted Kim and his entire immediate family: “All of this buried his whole family like an avalanche, squeezing the life out of them under its unyielding weight.” The author, a journalist for a local publication in the years following Jennifer Hill’s murder, looked into the case back in the 1970s. His journalistic prowess is evident—Skillings sticks to the facts and adds some revealing cultural context (particularly noteworthy is his observation that there was an “absence of skepticism toward law enforcement and our courts of law” at the time); as a result, his account doesn’t feel exploitative, unlike many true-crime properties. One note: The case could have been presented in a clearer chronology to aid reader comprehension.
An engaging and thoroughly detailed true-crime narrative.Pub Date: July 11, 2025
ISBN: 9798349466489
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Oct. 8, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
A pleasure for fans of old-school historical narratives.
Avuncular observations on matters historical from the late popularizer of the past.
McCullough made a fine career of storytelling his way through past events and the great men (and occasional woman) of long-ago American history. In that regard, to say nothing of his eschewing modern technology in favor of the typewriter (“I love the way the bell rings every time I swing the carriage lever”), he might be thought of as belonging to a past age himself. In this set of occasional pieces, including various speeches and genial essays on what to read and how to write, he strikes a strong tone as an old-fashioned moralist: “Indifference to history isn’t just ignorant, it’s rude,” he thunders. “It’s a form of ingratitude.” There are some charming reminiscences in here. One concerns cajoling his way into a meeting with Arthur Schlesinger in order to pitch a speech to presidential candidate John F. Kennedy: Where Richard Nixon “has no character and no convictions,” he opined, Kennedy “is appealing to our best instincts.” McCullough allows that it wasn’t the strongest of ideas, but Schlesinger told him to write up a speech anyway, and when it got to Kennedy, “he gave a speech in which there was one paragraph that had once sentence written by me.” Some of McCullough’s appreciations here are of writers who are not much read these days, such as Herman Wouk and Paul Horgan; a long piece concerns a president who’s been largely lost in the shuffle too, Harry Truman, whose decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan McCullough defends. At his best here, McCullough uses history as a way to orient thinking about the present, and with luck to good ends: “I am a short-range pessimist and a long-range optimist. I sincerely believe that we may be on the way to a very different and far better time.”
A pleasure for fans of old-school historical narratives.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781668098998
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 26, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
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