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Picking Out Of A Line-Up: Five Recently Acquired True-Crime Books. To bring you the true-crime material you love faster, we’ve created a system: find a theme or medium (notorious cases, drug-crime documentaries, etc.), pick at least five relevant pieces, watch the first 10 minutes/read the first 10 pages of each, and tell you whether it’s worth your time. Sort of a true-crime Tinder, if you will. And y'all Best Evidence subscribers get to read this before it goes live to the blog on Monday, the better to plan your heat-wave reading!
This time around, I grabbed five true-crime books I’ve acquired in the last few months. Which ones sucked me in, and which ones just…sucked? Let’s get into it. -- SDB
Paula Uruburu, American Eve: Evelyn Nesbit, Stanford White, the Birth of the “It” Girl and the Crime Of The Century
Insert joke about how that subtitle is a good 2-3 of the 10 pages here…and then one about the four epigraphs up top, like, ma’am, just start the feggin’ story! The story, of course, is one of Gilded Age America’s most notorious: Harry K. Thaw murdered legendary architect Stanford White on the roof of the old Madison Square Garden…and his motivation for thatcrime was a crime of its own.
Uruburu is one of those authors who calls pre-area-code 212 “Mannahatta,” and there is a lot of dudgeonous alliteration in the first 10 pages — “fittest Philistines” this, “purveyor and pillager” that — but the eat-the-rich asperity (…Jesus, now I’m doing it) directed at “the calculating Calvinists who sat at the top of the food chain [and] ruled over their classless empires of excess” is salutary here in 2019 Trump’s America. Yeah, the attempt to mimic Edwardian diction is a little much, but even if it never settles down, I’m here for an indictment of the previous century’s Jeffrey Epstein.
VERDICT: KEEP READING
Daniel Stashower, The Beautiful Cigar Girl: Mary Rogers, Edgar Allan Poe, and The Invention Of Murder
Stashower had me at his quote from an 1840s letter to the editor: “[H]ave the gentlemen of the press no shame?” His introduction to the story…of a story about a case (specifically, the murder of Mary Rogers and the way the real mystery and Poe’s groundbreaking fictionalization of it fed each other) is clear and elegant. As well, I get a sense from Stashower’s writing of exasperated fondness with Poe, a legendary talent suffering the effects of myriad Victorian traumas who nevertheless must have been exhausting to know personally, even at an epistolary remove.
Stashower also makes it clear that he’s going to interrogate Mary Rogers’s positioning by the press, Poe, and others as a “bankable commodity,” which is highly relevant to discussions true-crime reviewers and consumers have been having of late about the ethics of monetizing those conversations.
VERDICT: KEEP READING
Edward J. Balleisen, Fraud: An American History From Barnum To Madoff
I was eager to read this when my dad, just as keen to read it as I was, bought it for me for my birthday for the purposes of later borrowing. I think I’ll hand it over unread and see what he makes of it, as Balleisen is a Duke professor who’s in fact providing a historical overview of “the regulation of American business fraud” via a university-press tome blurbed pretty much exclusively by other academics. One, Dan Ariely, was in the Theranos doc, and while he’s charming on-camera, Dave Sr. and I both found his book a diminishing-returns proposition — often an issue with books that are more case study than history.
I’ll probably come back to this one eventually, depending on what my pops has to say; the prose is fine. But it’s the fattest of the books in the list and the tiniest-fonted, so it’s…going to be a while.
VERDICT: RESHELVE
Patrick Radden Keefe, Say Nothing: A True Story Of Murder And Memory In Northern Ireland
Say Nothing is getting a ton of good reviews; based on the first 10 pages, it’s no surprise. Introducing the victim partly by way of her 10 children, Keefe also introduces us to a precise, effaced writing style: “Jean McConville wasn’t looking for any prizes, and she didn’t get any.” Not to get all copy-editing inside baseball on y’all here, but it’s the comma that tells you what you need to know. An author who wants to amp the drama on that second clause sets it off with an em dash or an ellipsis, and that’s what you’d see in 85 percent of the writing in the genre. Keefe has more important work to do, and does it, also managing to avoid what so much writing about Ireland in the 19th and 20th centuries does not, that bathetic description of the Irish urban poor that practically comes bundled with a thumb drive of minor-chord Celtic flute drops. I’m eager to keep going with this one.
VERDICT: KEEP READING
William Klaber and Philip Melanson, Shadow Play: The Unsolved Murder of Robert F. Kennedy
If this one sounds familiar, it’s probably because Klaber is one of the hosts of The RFK Tapes, and if you enjoyed that podcast, you’ll likely enjoy the book, which was updated and revised for the 2018 edition I looked into. The murder itself was an extremely chaotic and confusing event, with a lot of people crammed into a space the authors describe as a subway car in size and density of people per square foot, with myriad secondary witnesses outside the kitchen, and the writing does a very good job locating you in the space and timeline.
But it may feel extraneous after the podcast, so I’m torn as far as a recommendation for those who did listen; it’s not a waste of time, probably, but it’s not a priority, either. If you find it at the vacation cabin, though, or aren’t a podcast person?
VERDICT: KEEP READING
Assuming that Damon Herriman’s multiple Mansons (among other looks at the figure) aren’t enough for you, now you can buy the site of one of his “family”’s infamous crimes. 3311 Waverly Drive, the SoCal home where four Manson acolytes killed Leno and Rosemary LaBianca, has been placed on the market for $1,988,800.
According to the real estate listing, which does not mention its role in the August 10, 1969 crime, the structure is a “classic 1920’s Los Feliz gated single story home with a pool” that offers “unparalleled privacy.” The home was last sold in 1998, and is prices “slightly below market value,” CNN reports. According to the property’s agent, interest has been “extremely high. “It's been so long since the event that it's a non-issue for most people," Redfin agent Robert Giambalvo said. "Most of the buyers, I'm finding, were born after. They're younger than 50 years old.” -- EB
Is Makeup a Murder cringe-worthy, or clever? Allure pointed me to the cosmetics brand from makeup artist Theresa Spencer, which promises on its site to allow you to “slay faces with crime scene investigation makeup.” Its eye shadows have colors like “ricin,” a sponge is called “bloody bender,” and of course there’s “Finger Print Setting Powder.” I wish you could see the look on my face as I type this, because it would communicate my nonplussedness with the brand. Am I just being a fuddy-duddy here? After all, Urban Decay doesn’t bother me, so why is this company’s effort sitting poorly with me? -- EB
Elizabeth Holmes returned to court this week. In a pretrial hearing Wednesday, the disgraced Theranos founder “scored a small victory,” Fox Business reports, as a judge agreed to her team’s request for “expedited access to hoards of FDA documents.” The docs, her attorneys say, will prove that Holmes and co-defendant Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani were unaware that the company’s technology was producing inaccurate results. -- EB
Just a reminder: if Best Evidence has 2000 paid subscribers by August 2020 (when the Holmes trial is set to begin), I’ll cover it in-person for you on a daily basis. If we get 3000, Sarah will come out and tag team it with me. Since everyone here is a paid subscriber, you’ve already done your part -- and we thank you. If you’d like to see this original coverage, please do share our membership drive with other true crime fans, so we can afford to devote ourselves full-time to that and future in-person efforts. Thanks again!
Khloé Kardashian’s true crime show has been picked up for a second season. The show, called Twisted Sisters, will launch its second season on August 12, a press release from the network announced. The series, which I have never watched, “explores true stories of sisters as they evolve from kin to killers, delving into the events that drove them to take extreme and deadly measures.” This seems like a very specific matter to me, but it’s apparently a broad enough phenomenon that it’s capable of generating at least ten more episodes.
"Anyone who knows me understands what a huge true crime fan I am,” Kardashian said in a written statement. “This series shows how strong the bonds between sisters really are but how twisted they can become when they’re triggered by jealousy.” Did Khloé just, like, subtweet her entire family via ID press release? If so, that’s kind of a baller move. -- EB
Monday on Best Evidence: I have a huge folder of super juicy stuff I need to parse out over the next few days, so stay tuned!
What is this thing? This should help.
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