Readable enough, but disappointingly short on dramatic appeal or sociological insight.
Freelance journalist Van Meter recounts the grisly killing of an 18-year-old college student.
The murder of Katie Autry and subsequent arrests of two local men for the crime was a regional media sensation in May 2003. The victim, who moonlighted at a topless bar, was beaten, strangled and then set on fire in her dorm room at Western Kentucky University. Two 21-year-olds from nearby Bowling Green were later charged. One, a high-school dropout named Stephen Soules, eventually pleaded guilty and testified against the other suspect, a part-time drug dealer named Luke Goodrum. Van Meter follows events diligently, but his mechanical narrative proves more tawdry and depressing than revelatory. It’s difficult to find any redeeming qualities in either of the suspects, their families or, for that matter, the victim’s family. The grim landscape these characters inhabit is dominated by broken homes, casual sex, drug and alcohol abuse, teen pregnancy and domestic violence. Flat, inert prose fails to infuse the tale with local color or dimension—surprising, given that the first-time author is from Bowling Green. Readers are rushed through events police-blotter style, and the skimpy account of the March 2005 trial provides few definitive answers to what actually happened in Katie’s dorm room. The most memorable aspect of the courtroom proceedings are the icy glares heaped on Katie’s dutiful foster parents by her biological mother and her aunts, whose air of superiority is at odds with the fact that they allowed Katie and her younger sister to be removed to foster care in the first place. Thanks to his well-monied stepfather, Goodrum got a quality defense team. Given his previous history of violence toward women, whether he actually deserved it remains unclear.
Readable enough, but disappointingly short on dramatic appeal or sociological insight.Pub Date: Jan. 9, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-4165-3868-4
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Free Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2008
The Atlanta child murders comprise the starting point for this virtuoso polemic against racism in America. Baldwin writes bluntly: "Others may see American progress in economic, racial and social affairs—I do not." It is this distinctive Baldwinian voice of outrage that powers his penetrating examination of why color still divides America. Baldwin thinks that Wayne Williams, the black man accused of the murders of 28 black children over a 22-month period, was railroaded. No matter that his conviction was presided over by a black judge in a Southern city governed by a black mayor. Williams was prosecuted under intense pressure to close a case that might tarnish Atlanta's reputation as a "city too busy to hate." A black administration's presence, says Baldwin, did not change the fact that the legal system served the commercial interests of a booming Southern city. To consider this only as an issue of class, contends Baldwin, is a denial by blacks and whites alike of America's legacy of slavery. He writes that ". . .this country, in toto, from Atlanta to Boston, to Texas to California, is not so much a vicious racial caldron—many, if not most countries are that—as a paranoid color wheel." By sketching the emergence of the black middle class and its complicity in maintaining the "white" rules, and the white flight from the city to the suburbs—leaving a mostly black, impoverished city. Baldwin describes how the wheel goes round. And its consequence remains: How do you become "white" enough to get up and out of the ghetto? Ironically, it was the rage of the parents of the murdered children that set Atlanta's color wheel spinning. Once they provoked national attention, according to Baldwin, the pressure to solve the crimes began. Until then, no one was ". . .compelled to hear the needs of a captive population."Baldwin delivers his judgment in cranky, idiosyncratic exposition that links the state of race relations with the prosecution of Williams. He details the official maneuvering that brought Williams to trial and the extraordinary legal decision to charge him with the murders of two black men, but permit the accusations and evidence of all the children's murders to be discussed at his trial. Baldwin has penetrated a sensational crime with his considerable novelist's skill for seeing things the rest of us don't. In the process, he's delivered a stinging indictment of racial stagnation.
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1985
ISBN: 1568495757
Page Count: -
Publisher: Holt Rinehart & Winston
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1985
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
At times slow-going, but the riveting period detail and dramatic flair eventually render this tale an animated history...
A murder that transfixed the world and the invention that made possible the chase for its perpetrator combine in this fitfully thrilling real-life mystery.
Using the same formula that propelled Devil in the White City (2003), Larson pairs the story of a groundbreaking advance with a pulpy murder drama to limn the sociological particulars of its pre-WWI setting. While White City featured the Chicago World’s Fair and America’s first serial killer, this combines the fascinating case of Dr. Hawley Crippen with the much less gripping tale of Guglielmo Marconi’s invention of radio. (Larson draws out the twin narratives for a long while before showing how they intersect.) Undeniably brilliant, Marconi came to fame at a young age, during a time when scientific discoveries held mass appeal and were demonstrated before awed crowds with circus-like theatricality. Marconi’s radio sets, with their accompanying explosions of light and noise, were tailor-made for such showcases. By the early-20th century, however, the Italian was fighting with rival wireless companies to maintain his competitive edge. The event that would bring his invention back into the limelight was the first great crime story of the century. A mild-mannered doctor from Michigan who had married a tempestuously demanding actress and moved to London, Crippen became the eye of a media storm in 1910 when, after his wife’s “disappearance” (he had buried her body in the basement), he set off with a younger woman on an ocean-liner bound for America. The ship’s captain, who soon discerned the couple’s identity, updated Scotland Yard (and the world) on the ship’s progress—by wireless. The chase that ends this story makes up for some tedious early stretches regarding Marconi’s business struggles.
At times slow-going, but the riveting period detail and dramatic flair eventually render this tale an animated history lesson.Pub Date: Oct. 24, 2006
ISBN: 1-4000-8066-5
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2006
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