Genre News

That Should Sound Familiar Author Martin Edwards gave me a laugh with his story of a shopping expedition in a Liverpool bookstore. He found a title that sounded interesting: a hardcover called Catching Killers. He picked it up only to discover that he wrote it. A case of Alzheimer's? No. Martin explains.

New Jersey's Murder History Genealogist George Joynson explores early twentieth-century murders on the Jersey Shore in a new book out from the History Press. It's Murders in Monmouth: Capital Crimes from the Jersey Shore's Past [Amazon; B&N]. Even though some of the cases are a century old, the author recently told a local newspaper that "In one case where the husband shot the wife, the children were descendants of both the victim and the murderer. They wanted no publicity." Time could not heal that wound.

I Want To Read It, Snobby Review Aside When his search through the family tree turned up an ancestor who participated in a groundless lynching, Warren Read wrote an account of his geneaological experience and of the crime itself. The result is The Lyncher in Me: A Search for Redemption in the Face of History [Amazon; B&N], part true crime tale, part a search for absolution. It certainly sounds like a compelling book, even if another memoirist ripped it apart in the L.A. Times. It just kills me when reviewers select a single sentence to mock in an effort to prove that a book is either not literary enough or too literary. You can please some of the people, etc. Like product boycotts, scathing reviews often boomerang. The axe-grinder concludes: "Read is unable to distract us from the realization that he's the hero of his own tale; something no memoirist can afford to be." Sounds to me like a tale in dire need of a hero - and a good read.

An Unsolved Heartache A new documentary takes a look at the annihiliation of the Cassidy family, which happened 40 years ago and still leaves northwestern Ohio in pain. It certainly sounds like a very strange case - one in which the only surviving member of the family would not talk to the police. Hm. The film is Nothing Left Behind, and the Sandusky Register recently ran a piece on it complete with highlights from the film.

'Eraser Killings' A new book by authors Marilee Strong and Mark Powelson focuses on the Scott Peterson case and other examples of what are dubbed "eraser killers" - going as far back as Chester Gillette. The book is Erased: Missing Women, Murdered Wives [Amazon; B&N]. A blogger known as "No Body Guy" (actually a prosecutor who studies murder cases litigated without a victim's body) was interviewed for the book about the challenge of obtaining convictions in those circumstances.

Publishers Weekly comments that the book "makes a convincing case that there is a growing number of men... who murder their wives or girlfriends with premeditation and dispose of the body in an attempt to make both the crime and the victim disappear. They kill... because the woman no longer serves any 'purpose' in the man's emotionally desolate world, or because he sees her as an obstacle to a life he fantasizes for himself."

The "growing number" causes me to stumble (uxrocide is hardly a new phenomenon, alas), not to mention the fact that unhappy wives are no strangers to destruction of the corpus delicti - witness the fate of Mr. Mullenax, if you need an example.

Nonetheless it sounds like an interesting examination, even if Booklist chidingly states that it "delivers the gore in a tantalizing manner that true-crime devotees may consider the book's real pay dirt." Wow. I for one can do without the gore, thank you.

And for some other links in the theme...

Here's a Ron Franscell interview in the Beaumont Enterprise....

Colin Evans has a new title out: Blood on the Table - a case study of the New York City's medical examiner's office....

Finally - there will no longer be a "Pervert of the Week" (the strangest search term that led someone to CLEWS of late) because the genre takes enough pokes without drawing more attention to the curious fringe elements in the fandom.