True Crime: An American Anthology
Nothing — repeat, nothing — is scarier than the evil of real life. I remember reading HELTER SKELTER, Vincent Bugliosi’s account of the Charles Manson murders and trial, and being so scared out of my wits … on a bright, sunny Sunday afternoon. Such is the power of true crime.
That makes TRUE CRIME: AN AMERICAN ANTHOLOGY a powerful record of the worst human deeds committed over the last 350 years. I find it odd that editor Harold Schechter sought to make this book an AMERICAN one, as if our country’s citizens are more debased, depraved and demented than all the rest. These pages suggest a resounding “hell, yes.”
What evil lurks in the heart of man? The authors here know, and there’s more than 800 pages of it. Schechter has arranged this collection chronologically, beginning with items from names you find in history textbooks, including Cotton Mather, Abraham Lincoln and Benjamin Franklin, as well as beloved novelists Mark Twain, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Ambrose Bierce.
These are all fine and good, mostly from the standpoint of historical perspective. But for me, the meat of TRUE CRIME lies in its more modern offerings, when the fine art of creative nonfiction came into its own in pieces of journalism that read like ripping fiction … but sadly isn’t.
If you only know Jack Webb from DRAGNET, you’ll be rather stunned at how good a writer the stoic actor is, with an article on The Black Dahlia. The piece proved an influence to novelist James Ellroy, who tells of his own mom’s murder in the haunting “My Mother’s Killer.”
Dominick Dunne — a household name during the O.J. Simpson trials — covers the Melendez brothers, Jimmy Breslin tackles the Son of Sam, W.T. Brannon delves into Richard Speck, Truman Capote — a giant in this genre, thanks to IN COLD BLOOD — interviews an associate of Charles Manson, while none other than PSYCHO author Robert Bloch aims his pen at the horrific crimes of Ed Gein, whose killing spree inspired Norman Bates (and Leatherface).
There’s everything from a sampling of folky murder ballads to Damon Runyon, Jim Thompson, Zora Neale Hurston and James Thurber — an odd, varied lot with one thing in common: telling the truth about the lengths to which some will go, the depths to which some will sink. You’ll hope you’re not on of them, especially on the receiving end.
This is an awfully grim, but socially important and rather satisfying anthology. —Rod Lott
I’ll be checking this one out. I think Schecter’s the author who wrote the Edgar Allan Poe novels some years ago, which were pretty good.
Are you sure Jack Webb in the book is the Dragnet actor? I mean, there was a writer of moderately good crime novels in the fifties with the exactly same name. (And I seem to remember that he did write some true crime.) It is really confusing - either of them should’ve used the first letter of his second name or some such. Jack X. Webb might’ve sounded good.
Yep, I’m sure. The intro says it’s the DRAGNET Webb.