Review by New York Times Review
THE MUTILATED BODY of a beautiful young woman is dumped in a vacant lot.... The heir to an industrial empire is kidnapped and killed, possibly by accident.... A woman spends 40 years hunting the man who murdered her college friend.... A serial killer eludes the police by disappearing into a fog.... I'd happily read any novel on these dismal subjects, but fans of bleak crime fiction are out of luck here. These spine-tingling stories all happen to be true - and, in some cases, even stranger than fiction. BLACK DAHLIA, RED ROSE: The Crime, Corruption, and Cover-Up of America's Greatest Unsolved Murder (Liveright, $26.95), by PIU Eatwell, provides fresh evidence that we can never get enough of our favorite pin-up corpse. Elizabeth Short was 22 years old when her nude and savagely mutilated body was discovered in mid-January of 1947 at the edge of an empty lot in Los Angeles. "Nobody had expected her to be so sullenly beautiful," says Eatwell, who speculates that Short's striking beauty - which inspired the infatuated press to call her "The Black Dahlia" ("evocative of an exotic flower, of desire both toxic and intoxicating") - prompted her enduring legend. "Her story became a morality tale," Eatwell writes in this juicy page-turner, "a fable illustrating the dangers posed to women by early-20th-century 'Hollywood': a space of adventure and freedom, glamour, ruthless commercialism and dangerously uncircumscribed female sexuality." That's nicely put, capturing both the allure and the perils of the dream factory that promised riches and fame to star-struck young women from tired little towns all over war-weary America and who, even today, find themselves at the mercy of predatory men. The original mass migration to Los Angeles created, as one observer put it, a subculture of uprooted single women: "tall girls and short girls, curly-haired girls and girls with their hair drawn sleekly back over their brows, girls who suggest mignonettes and girls who suggest tuberoses; girls in aprons and girls in evening gowns - girls by the score, their faces all grease paint, waiting in little chattering groups for their big moment." For all its salacious content, Eatwell's historical crime study is an expansive work that delves into the broader culture of postwar Los Angeles, "a city of bright lights and darker shadows, where cops fraternized with mobsters and girls sold themselves for the promise of a bit part in a movie." Her zealous efforts to solve the case and name the killer are less than convincing, but her immersive style is filled with camera-ready period detail. THE RICH ARE HUMAN TOO. That's the message to take from THE DEATH OF AN HEIR: Adolph Coors III and the Murder That Rocked an American Brewing Dynasty (St. Martin's, $27.99), Philip Jett's compassionate appraisal of the tragedy that shattered the family of Adolph (Ad) Herman Joseph Coors ?, when the 44-year-old chairman of the board of the Colorado beer company died during a botched kidnapping. The calamity couldn't have happened to a more undeserving member of his moneyed class. Ad Coors was devoted to his wife and four children and lived a relatively simple, scandal-free life. (The white-over-turquoise International Harvester Travelall he drove was a modest indulgence.) Being a severe stutterer (which angered his formidably stern father) and allergic to beer (which didn't help either), he wasn't even his father's favorite son. But as the eldest of three brothers (their sister didn't count) he was destined from birth to take over the family enterprises. Joe Corbett was more impressed with Ad's position than Ad was. A plotter and a planner who didn't think robbing a bank was worth the effort, Corbett picked a softer target, and on the morning of Feb. 9,1960, he intercepted Ad at the Türkey Creek Bridge as he was driving to work. Somehow, the kidnapping turned into what may have been an accidental killing, leading to "the largest U.S. manhunt since the Lindbergh kidnapping." Although Jett's chronological narrative is pretty straightforward, certain forensic details, like the use of fingerprint analysis and dental records, should please techno-wonks - as should the fact that the case was solved by identifying varieties of paper stock and models of typewriters. Did the smog smother the murders or did the murders obscure the smog? That's the terrible question Kate Winkler Dawson raises in DEATH IN THE AIR: The True Story of a Serial Killer, the Great London Smog, and the Strangling of a City (Hachette, $27), her deeply researched and densely atmospheric study of two intersecting events in London, the murder spree of John Reginald (Reg) Christie and the Great Smog of 1952. It was bitter cold that December, prompting the city's eight million residents to pile on the coal briquettes and draw close to the fire. At the time, Britain was selling its best black coal to foreign countries and palming off the dirty brown stuff on its own people, who couldn't afford the better coal anyway. But this cheaper means of heating proved deadly, asphyxiating 4,000 Londoners and leaving thousands more gasping. The death toll was so high that undertakers ran out of coffins. Shifting weather patterns contributed to the disaster, trapping pollutants over the city, grounding planes and suspending traffic. Theaters, hotels and restaurants operated on reduced staff when workers were unable to report; in any case, few of their patrons were willing or able to venture out. Day after day, the "peasouper" hung in the air and the roaring fires burned in the city's hearths. "Swirls of fog," Dawson explains, "were romantic and beguiling to Londoners." And the "affinity for an open fire was virtually a requirement for being British." Meanwhile, the fog rolling over 10 Rillington Place proved a satanic blessing, smothering the little garden where Reg Christie was industriously planting the bodies of the eight women he'd killed. (Ironically, he'd enticed some of them into his flat with the promise of a special cough medicine that would clear their smog-filled lungs.) This diligent gardener wasn't entirely secretive about what he was up to, even using a human thighbone to prop up the garden fence. " 'Neighbors watched me digging,' he said. 'They nodded 'cheerios' to me.' " Until he was brought to trial the following year, the infamous "Beast of Rillington Place" may have been the only person in London to delight in the Great Fog. ANY BOOK WITH "BELLE ÉPOQUE" in the title puts me in mind of Woody Allen's enchanting fantasy film, "Midnight in Paris," in which Pablo Picasso's mistress and her present-day American lover travel back in time to the glorious era when Paris was the playground of great artists like Toulouse-Lautrec, Gauguin and Degas. John Merriman's BALLAD OF THE ANARCHIST BANDITS: The Crime Spree That Gripped Belle Époque Paris (Nation Books, $28) tells another story of that era - not the romance of the "Ville Lumiere" with its dazzling palaces and grand hotels but the dark tale of a city in the grip of a crime wave. "The guidebooks never mentioned the quartiers populates," Merriman notes, "or the impoverished suburbs of Paris, where most of the workers who ran the trams, built the popular new cars and cleaned the city lived." It took the anarchists to argue, often violently, that working people were suffering from "increased mechanization, the decline of apprenticeship, the increase in piece rates, speedups and the beginnings of scientific management in large factories." Merriman's subject is the rise and fall of the Bonnot Gang, but he shrewdly wraps his historical analysis in the arms of a love story. Rirette Maîtrejean and Victor Kibaltchiche met on the battlements of the class war, which fueled their affair and gave it purpose. But Jules Bonnot, the leader of their gang, was more committed to plunder than to the cause. "Our blood pays for the luxury of the wealthy" went the anarchist battle cry. "Our enemy is the master. Long live anarchy!" Yet Bonnot just wanted to get his hands on that upper-class loot. Some true-crime books aren't the least bit romantic, and they're usually the ones that break your heart. Dashka Slater wrote THE 57 BUS (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $17.99) for teenagers, but her audience should also include parents. The two youngsters from Oakland, Calif., whose paths cross so disastrously are both extremely likable. Sasha, a boy who attends a small private school and "identifies as agender," is on the bus going home when Richard, a junior at the public high school who's goofing off, puts a lighter to the gauzy skirt Sasha's wearing. The skirt goes up in flames, Sasha receives second- and third-degree burns, and Richard is accused of two hate-crime felonies. Charged as an adult, he faces the possibility of spending the rest of his life in prison. Slater, who wrote a shorter account of this story that ran in The New York Times Magazine, views these bare facts from a firm sociological perspective. Sasha comes from a nice neighborhood up in the hills. Richard lives in the flatlands of East Oakland, where two-thirds of the city's murders occur. "The schools are shabbier here; the test scores are lower. There's more trash on the streets, more roaming dogs, more liquor stores, fewer grocery stores." Slater doesn't apologize for Richard; she just asks us to consider where he came from and to question the ingrained prejudice of a legal system that eventually locked him up for five years. Even Sasha's father recognized that what Richard did was "impulsive, immature and unpremeditated." Michael ARNTFIELD makes the most of the local crimes he covers in MAD CITY: The True Story of the Campus Murders That America Forgot (Little A, $24.95) by hitching them to some of Wisconsin's more flamboyant murder cases. Regional pride was excuse enough to bring up notables like the "Plainfield Ghoul," Ed Gein ("a serial killer and body snatcher whose crimes inspired the Robert Bloch novel and subsequent Alfred Hitchcock film, 'Psycho,' as well as the comparatively down-market 'Texas Chainsaw Massacre' franchise that followed"), and the "Milwaukee Cannibal" Jeffrey Dahmer. Not to mention the "Vampire of Düsseldorf," an infamous German murderer whose mummified head came ashore in the baggage of a returning World War II soldier. (It continues to be the prize attraction in a little museum in the tourist town of Wisconsin Dells.) Arntfield presents his murder case as "perhaps the greatest story never told in American history, at least the history of American crime." Like his literary style, that claim is overblown. But the story of Christine Rothschild and Linda Tomaszewski still deserves to be told. In 1967, the girls met and became friends at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. The late '60s were a time when protest marches were replacing pep rallies and coeds no longer wanted to be called coeds. Christine had a room on the ground floor of Ann Emery Hall, a genteel women's residence with "no controlled entry, no intercom, no cameras or convex mirrors, and no sign-in book." She was unaware that a stalker was paying her nightly visits (by way of her window) until he stepped up his twisted courtship with creepy phone calls. Once she'd identified her stalker as 42-year-old Niels Bjorn Jorgensen, a third-year medical school resident, Christine told the campus police, whose advice was simply to stay alert and buy a rape whistle. Luckily, she'd also confided in Linda. Christine wound up beaten and stabbed to death, and her friend was the only person with the grit to pursue Jorgensen - across the country, for 40 years! As a grim reminder of what he'd done, for many of those years Linda also sent him a card on Valentine's Day. As with so many true-crime touches, that one's better than fiction. Marilyn STASIO has covered crime fiction for the Book Review since 1988. Her column appears twice a month.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [October 29, 2017]
Review by Booklist Review
Slater handles the sensitive subject matter of adolescence, hate crimes, the juvenile justice system, and the intersection of race and class with exemplary grace and emotional connection. Sasha, a genderqueer teen riding the 57 bus, was asleep when Richard Thomas, an African American teen, decided to play a prank by playing with a lighter by her skirt. But the skirt caught fire. Sasha spent grueling amounts of time in a hospital burn unit, and Richard spent the rest of his high-school career mired in a long trial and awaiting sentencing. In this true-crime tale, Slater excels at painting a humanistic view of both Sasha and Richard, especially in the aftermath of the crime. Readers will enjoy that Sasha's life is completely developed, while other readers may have a few unresolved questions surrounding Richard's upbringing. Ultimately, this book will give readers a better understanding of gender nonbinary people and a deep empathy for how one rash action can irrevocably change lives forever.--Bratt, Jessica Anne Copyright 2017 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Journalist and author Slater (Escargot) offers a riveting account of the events that preceded and followed a 2013 assault in Oakland, Calif. Both Sasha (a white, agender private school teenager) and Richard (an African-American public school student who had lost numerous loved ones to murder) rode the 57 bus every day. One afternoon, Richard-egged on by friends-lit the sleeping Sasha's skirt on fire, and the resulting blaze left third-degree burns over 22% of Sasha's body. Sixteen-year-old Richard was arrested and charged as an adult with committing a hate crime. The short, easily digestible chapters take a variety of forms, including narrative, poetry, lists (including terms for gender, sex, sexuality, and romantic inclinations), text-message conversations, and Richard's heartrending letters of apology to Sasha. Using details gleaned from interviews, social media, surveillance video, public records, and other sources, Slater skillfully conveys the complexities of both young people's lives and the courage and compassion of their families, friends, and advocates, while exploring the challenges and moral ambiguities of the criminal justice system. This painful story illuminates, cautions, and inspires. Ages 12-up. Agent: Erin Murphy, Erin Murphy Literary. (Oct.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by School Library Journal Review
Gr 6 Up-On November 4, 2013, Sasha, a high school senior from Oakland, CA, was napping on the 57 bus home from school. Shortly thereafter, Richard, another Oakland teen, boarded the bus with his two friends. When the trio's jokes took a dark turn, Richard's and Sasha's lives were forever changed. Slater, who originally covered the crime for the New York Times magazine, here breaks down the series of events into short and effective chapters, divided into four parts: "Sasha," "Richard," "The Fire," and "Justice." By investigating the lives of these two teens, their backgrounds, their friends and families, and the circumstances that led to that fateful day on the bus, Slater offers readers a grounded and balanced view of a horrific event. There is much baked into the story of these intersecting lives that defies easy categorization, including explorations of gender identity, the racial and class divisions that separate two Oakland neighborhoods, the faults and limits of the justice system, the concept of restorative justice, and the breadth of human cruelty, guilt, and forgiveness. With clarity and a journalist's sharp eye for crucial details, Slater explains preferred pronouns; the difference between gender and sex as well as sexuality and romance; and the intricacies of California's criminal justice process. The text shifts from straightforward reporting to lyrical meditations, never veering into oversentimentality or simple platitudes. Readers are bound to come away with deep empathy for both Sasha and Richard. VERDICT Slater artfully unfolds a complex and layered tale about two teens whose lives intersect with painful consequences. This work will spark discussions about identity, community, and what it means to achieve justice.-Kiera Parrott, School Library Journal © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Horn Book Review
In 2013, on the 57 bus in Oakland, California, African American Richard, egged on by friends, set white, genderqueer Sasha's gauzy skirt on fire. Sasha survived but sustained third-degree burns; Richard was arrested for a hate crime. Using interviews, court documents, and news accounts, Slater has crafted a compelling true-crime story that goes beyond the headlines to tell the very human stories behind these individuals and their families. (c) Copyright 2018. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
In the fall of 2013, on a bus ride home, a young man sets another student on fire.In a small private high school, Sasha, a white teen with Asperger's, enjoyed "a tight circle of friends," "blazed through calculus, linguistics, physics, and computer programming," and invented languages. Sasha didn't fall into a neat gender category and considered "the place in-betweena real place." Encouraged by parents who supported self-expression, Sasha began to use the pronoun they. They wore a skirt for the first time during their school's annual cross-dressing day and began to identify as genderqueer. On the other side of Oakland, California, Richard, a black teen, was "always goofing around" at a high school where roughly one-third of the students failed to graduate. Within a few short years, his closest friends would be pregnant, in jail, or shot dead, but Richard tried to stay out of real trouble. One fateful day, Sasha was asleep in a "gauzy white skirt" on the 57 bus when a rowdy friend handed Richard a lighter. With a journalist's eye for overlooked details, Slater does a masterful job debunking the myths of the hate-crime monster and the African-American thug, probing the line between adolescent stupidity and irredeemable depravity. Few readers will traverse this exploration of gender identity, adolescent crime, and penal racism without having a few assumptions challenged. An outstanding book that links the diversity of creed and the impact of impulsive actions to themes of tolerance and forgiveness. (Nonfiction. 14-18) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
