Genre News & A Review of Harold Schechter's Best Yet

Phillip W. Steele, R.I.P. Mr. Steele passed away Thursday, November 8. He was an amateur historian and Ozark folklorist in the traditions of Homer Croy and Vance Randolph, documenting the lives of some of the Lower Midwest's most famous criminals. He wrote books and articles on the James brothers and Belle Starr, among others. Mr. Steele was widely considered a kind gentleman.

Said The Morning News of Springdale, Arkansas: "As a historian and folklorist, Steele authored four books with his Heritage Publishing Co., and eight with Pelican Publishing of Gretna, La. His subjects included classic Ozark ghost stories, the Butterfield stagecoach, the Civil War in the Ozarks and Monte Ne. For his biographies on outlaws Jesse and Frank James and their family, Belle and Pearl Starr and Bonnie and Clyde, Steele befriended descendants, collected original pictures and artifacts and included chapters on the outlaws' times in Northwest Arkansas." His family can be reached at P.O. Box 191, Springdale, AR 72765.

An Over-Celebrated Pathologist? Author Andrew Rose's postmortem critique of the career of Sir Bernard Spilsbury, easily the most famous pathologist of his day, continues to receive interesting reviews. The latest, courtesy the Telegraph, calls the biography a "demolition job."

Says the review: "In this splendidly well-written and constructed book, Rose, a former barrister and now an immigration judge, takes us through Spilsbury's cases, which included such early-20th-century classics as the Brides in the Bath; Dr Crippen; the Tollington Park Poisoning; Bywaters and Thompson; the Blazing Car Mystery; the Charing Cross Trunk Murder; and the Brighton Trunk Murders.... "

I have a handy rule, useful for you if you ever find yourself serving jury duty. The more cases an expert testifies in, the more skeptical should be the audience. Sound counter-intuitive? I'd much rather hear from a highly qualified expert who testifies once or twice a year than any of the "whores" (to use the prevailing legal term here) who turn up at the courthouse on a daily basis.

A Review of The Devil's Gentleman: Harold Schechter's Latest & Best

I've long wanted to have a Harold Schechter book packed in my bag if I ever found myself on a desert island. His subjects are so gory, and his voice so reportorial as he relays his stories, that it would exercise my mind while also making me glad to be on my island alone.

But his latest subject is a bit of a departure: Harold Schechter has taken on a serial killer of a different stripe: a poisoner - not the unusually dark matter we're used to seeing from the true crime genre's reigning New Yorker. The new book is The Devil's Gentleman: Privilege, Poison, and the Trial That Ushered in the Twentieth Century, and it belongs on any list of recent standouts in the genre.

The Wall Street Journal's Opinion Journal  adored the book. The New York Times also ran a glowing review: "The book is like a fin-de-siècle version of Court TV, there is a riveting sequence of appalling events, weird testimony, courtroom theatrics and bungled justice."

This is where Schechter's vast experience as a writer shows. He does not get in the way of his facts. It is the manner in which he relays them, and the order in which he arranges them, that reflect his art and judgment.

He has chosen his subject well. The book features a murder story that was a genuine puzzle and it also reflects access to a rich assortment of unique resources - diaries, letters, vast newspaper coverage, transcripts and family records. Those who read this tightly packed summary of the case might be better informed than were some of the jurors. If that's not too broad a hint about one of the twists and turns in the case.

The trial sequences are riveting and feature some of the best lawyering I have ever seen, read, or heard of. They're so impressive, these old lions of the bar, back when trial lawyers created work worthy of the stage. In this case, the lawyering went even above and beyond the usual brilliant oratory and called for a bit of psychiatry and steel nerves. During the court proceedings for an alleged serial killer, one lawyer in particular manages to steal the show entirely.

I love the archaic language that Schechter sprinkles throughout the story. He writes of one woman who drank a cup of poison. She "fell like six foot of chain," one quote went. Now that, to the lovers of the English language, is a phrase to relish. I suppose I'm revealing how black and cynical is my heart but reading Harold Schechter makes one do that. This is the one I'll find room for in my desert island carry-all, until he writes another at least.

Comments

[Fiz]

I've just read this and it's the only book I've ever read on the Molineux case that makes sense!

[Blimeyhecks]

I've ordered this on Clews recommendation, and because I loved reading one of Harold Schechter's Poe books recently - I must read the rest, it was beautifully written. His 'Encyclopedia of Serial Killers' - which is not for the faint hearted, is also a cracker.

[Newspaper]

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