Urban Murder

Family Guy does Law and Order.

One of my favorite episodes of Law and Order contains the quote: "It's New York. People find bodies in all kind of places." The same apparently can be said of books! The following titles, though separated by genre, are linked in their treatment of murder in the city.

Because my research centers on museums, I was drawn to this title for its setting during a world's fair. The book is full of wonderful historical background such as the maneuvering Olmsted and company went through to get the fair off of the ground and the horrendous working environment endured by those erecting the buildings and installing the displays. As with Larson's Dead Wake, however, so much is a given in the beginning (we know who the killer is) that it undercuts the drama that should have attached to H.H. Holmes' building projects and schemes. The chapters about the children traveling with Holmes were especially unsettling and I was left thinking about how American cities have been built into rather ominous settings through crime shows and comic books...

Terrible as the film was, I did enjoy the book Gone Girl because it surprised me and this one was billed as a second Gone Girl. It certainly drew me in, though almost all of the characters were terrible people and difficult to sympathize with. I also solved the mystery about four chapters from the end, but the excellent pacing kept me reading. My biggest critique is that the characters all had incredibly generic names and since there were two couples I quickly began mixing them up!

In the tradition of saving the best for last, I'm finishing with a book that I think everyone should read. It centers on the murder of African Americans in Los Angeles and examines homicide squads through the lens of a single murder (the killing of a cop's son) arguing that if all cases were investigated in the way that single case was, justice could be delivered to communities that have lost all faith in it. Leovy's ability to conjure the principal actors is excellent and the words of those actors help the reader to feel sympathy with the individuals who people these pages and these communities. The epilogue by itself is a great piece of scholarship, discussing how and why things have changed since the book's publication and offering solutions. This is an America I've never experienced and the fact that such conditions exist here is an important problem that everyone needs to read about and think about -- and hopefully help with through votes and attitudes if nothing else.