Philadelphia's Uxorcide in paperback

Around the same time that all of Detroit was caught up in the disappearance of Tara Grant and the subsequent murder trial of Stephen Grant, the city of Philadelphia was equally horrified by a prominent case of spousal murder involving a University of Pennsylvania professor who beat his young wife to death.

St. Martin's has now come out with a book about the case of Rafael and Ellen Robb. The book is Cruel Games: A Brilliant Professor, A Loving Mother, A Brutal Murder [Amazon; B&N]. The author is Rose Ciotta, an editor at the venerated Philadelphia Inquirer. Between the imprint, the author's credentials, and the subject matter, I look forward to the story. The remarkably different outcomes of the two cases of the murderous husbands also would seem to warrant study. (They don't hang uxorcides in Pennsylvania any more -- or even punish them all that harshly, it seems.)

To continue in a theme I brought up yesterday, it is the sort of story that riles genre critics, as an early Amazon reader review attests. It seems to me that two sorts of true crime tales draw the "blood money" cries. They are (a) spousal murder stories and (b) stories of serial sexual predators. I can understand why there would be public concern about the portrayal of sexual murders, why some worry about the way these crimes are depicted (or relished by the stereotypical 50-ish true crime weirdo in his black trenchcoat). But I don't understand why spousal murder cases sometimes get tarred with that brush. Anyway, I'm ordering it, darn it, and I think I'm going to enjoy it, too.