Katherine Addison's Blog, page 15
December 1, 2019
Review: Stiles, Custer's Trials

My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This is a scrutiny more than a biography. Stiles really gets dug in, particularly in talking about Custer's Civil War experience, and he talks extensively about the politics of the post-Civil War era and just what a mess Custer made of his attempts to wield power. He also tackles Custer's racism head-on---and Custer was a diehard white supremacist. Stiles' thesis, I think, is that there was only one thing in his life that George Armstrong Custer was good at---leading men into battle---and the bitter irony is that it's the same thing that killed him. Stiles also assumes that the persona Libbie Bacon Custer assumes in her writings---timid, naive, and vulnerable---is just that: a persona; the real Libbie was a shrewd manipulator whose love for her husband was real, but badly battered by his infidelities and his gambling. This book is dense but excellently well-written.
View all my reviews

Published on December 01, 2019 07:30
Review: Barnett, Touched by Fire

My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Barnett offers a panorama of George Armstrong Custer's life and the second half of the nineteenth century; she's interested as much in what happened to Custer's image after he died as she is in his life. She also gives nearly equal billing to Libbie Bacon Custer, who was professionally Custer's widow for over 50 years, accepting at face value Libbie's portrayal of herself in her writing, as timid, vulnerable, naive, and always madly in love with Custer. (Other biographers, like T. J. Stiles, are more skeptical.) This is an excellent read.
View all my reviews

Published on December 01, 2019 07:25
Review: Scott, Connor, Willey, They Died with Custer

My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This is a book about bones. Specifically, the bones of the men who died at the Little Bighorn in 1876. The authors, an archaeologist and two forensic scientists, are able to deduce quite a lot from the bones recovered during archaeologist excavations or discovered randomly on the battlefield. They identify five men (the identifications ranging from "well, it's a good guess" to 99.9% certainty), and they can tell a great deal about the troopers as a group: chronic lower back problems from horseback riding, terrible teeth, a variety of healed injuries that probably had to do with horses. (One of the archaeological studies quoted referred to "large mammal accidents," which I find charming.)
This book is full of tables and graphs and statistics and is drier than its punchy title would suggest. I found it fascinating, but . . . fair warning.
View all my reviews

Published on December 01, 2019 07:17
September 15, 2019
Review: Renner, The Serial Killer's Apprentice

My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Because I liked True Crime Addict so much, I ordered The Serial Killer's Apprentice from Amazon. It's a collection of Renner's true crime writing about unsolved cases in the Cleveland area. The stories range from weird to creepy to terrifying, and Renner's writing is engaging, both straightforward and thoughtful, throughout. Having the defects of their virtues, these are stories without closure; Renner doesn't pretend to have solved any of these cases, only turned the spotlight back on their loose ends and inconsistencies. If you like that kind of thing, as I do, this is a great book. If you don't, you'll find it frustrating.
View all my reviews

Published on September 15, 2019 10:14
Review: Robertson, The Trial of Lizzie Borden

My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This is well-written and extensively researched and yet I ended up feeling very meh about it. Possibly because, as with some of the other books I've read recently, I've read too much about the topic. Robertson does offer a blow by blow account of the trial, but there was nothing in this book I didn't already know, and Robertson refuses to offer any theory of the crime whatsoever. And, I mean, I admire historians who recognize the difference between historiography and speculation, but when you're writing about an unsolved crime, it seems to me a little disingenuous not to acknowledge that you have a theory. Or, if you don't, I'd prefer if you came out and said that. Some kind of attempt to come to analytical grips with the crime.
So if you're looking for a place to start reading about Lizzie Borden, this is a great choice. Robertson writes clearly and cogently and she presents the evidence comprehensively and without bias.
View all my reviews

Published on September 15, 2019 10:09
Review: Herzog, The Woodchipper Murder

My rating: 3 of 5 stars
The first episode of Forensic Files is about the gruesome murder of Helle Crafts (and, yes, Fargo is based on it, too), so I knew exactly what this book was about when I saw it. It's not like Herzog is hiding his light under a bushel, here. It is perfectly competent true crime, without being much more than that, and Herzog for some reason published his book before Richard Crafts' second trial (the first one having ended in a hung jury because one juror seems to have been a spectacularly stupid man). The second trial resulted in the first murder conviction in Connecticut without an actual body. (They found bits of Helle Crafts: a tooth, a fingernail, some fragments of bone.)
Crafts will be eligible for parole in 2021, which was unimaginably far away in 1989, when The Woodchipper Murder was published. He will be 84.
View all my reviews

Published on September 15, 2019 10:08
Review: Smith, The Ardlamont Mystery

My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Okay, first of all, the subtitle, "The Real-Life Story Behind the Creation of Sherlock Holmes," is so grossly misleading as to be a lie. The death of Cecil Hambrough in 1893 had nothing whatsoever to do with the creation of Sherlock Holmes in 1887. What the subtitle means, when you unpack it properly, is that the two men who were the inspiration for Holmes (Joseph Bell and Henry Littlejohn--Bell is the famous one, but I'm willing to buy Smith's argument about Littlejohn being in there, too) were expert witnesses at the trial of Alfred Monson for the murder of Cecil Hambrough.
This is a very good book about the death of Cecil Hambrough, encumbered by an overly labored attempt to get Sherlock Holmes in there somehow. Smith does a good job of laying out the evidence, and I like his explanation of the anomalies and seeming contradictions, but Ardlamont is a terrible example if you want art imitates life/life imitates art, because these real-life Sherlocks failed in this particular instance. Monson, tried in Edinburgh, got off with the Scottish verdict of "not proven."
View all my reviews

Published on September 15, 2019 09:58
August 15, 2019
Review: Fox, Conan Doyle for the Defense

My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This book was well-written and enjoyable, but I came away feeling like I hadn't gained anything in my knowledge of the Oscar Slater case. Mostly, this is because I've read Roughead, but Fox doesn't bring anything new to the table except a focus on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and even there, I didn't find much beyond a brief biography and some (mis)quoting of Holmes.
My primary takeaway from this book is that I want to read Conan Doyle's true crime writing.
Three stars? Four stars? I'll go with four, because it IS a good read. And if you don't know anything about Oscar Slater and the murder of Miss Gilchrist, it's a great distillation of the story.
View all my reviews

Published on August 15, 2019 10:10
Review: Lemberger, Crime of Magnitude

My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This is an excellent book about another forgotten "Crime of the Century": the unsolved murder of 7 year old Annie Lemberger in 1911. Lemberger puts forward a solution, and I think a great deal of what he says makes sense. (I'm dubious about a sidebar, but I think my doubt comes from Lemberger trying to save all the fireworks for last instead of explaining and supporting his thesis as he goes.) Ironically, the case has been solved all along: the man who was arrested, who confessed, and who was convicted of Annie 's murder was in fact the murderer, despite all the smoke and mirrors thrown up after his conviction by both him and another person who used the case for political capital.
Lemberger is a good writer, and he has dug deeply, patiently, and carefully into the bewildering records of the case, so that he clearly points out contradictions, mistakes and outright lies in the versions of the story that propagated like weeds. One of the things this book demonstrates is how easy it is for a brazen liar to be believed because so few people double-check what they're told--or even worse, what they read in the paper.
View all my reviews

Published on August 15, 2019 10:07
Review: Appignanesi, Trials of Passion

My rating: 4 of 5 stars
[library]
This was a very interesting book about people who committed murder for "love" in Victorian England, belle epoque France and America at the beginning of the twentieth century. (I have "love" in quotes because several of these people were what we would call stalkers, so it's NOT love.) Appignanesi starts with Christiana Edmunds (whose story is too tangled for a parenthetical aside, but involves poisoned chocolates), goes through a number of French trials, including Gabrielle Bompard (Little Demon in the City of Light), and ends with Harry K. Thaw, who shot Stanford White. Appignanesi is a very good writer and she mostly resists the temptation to overtheorize her material, so it was an enjoyable read.
View all my reviews

Published on August 15, 2019 10:03