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Fiona's True Crime Book Reviews: M by author
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Peter Maas
Underboss: Sammy the Bull Gravano's Story of Life in the Mafia
What makes this account of the Mafia life and times of Sammy Gravano so seductive is Peter Maas's skillful editing of interview material. From his opening line--"Yeah, you could say I came from a pretty tough neighborhood"--to his final poignant comment on having gotten all his tattoos removed except a head of Christ that resists being eliminated-- "I guess God still wants me"--Gravano is nothing if not a compelling storyteller. He talks about his years in a youth gang, his robberies and shylocking, his murders, his lack of remorse (about which he is "not happy"), the ceremony of becoming a "made guy," his mentors, his "crew," his preference for gangsters over racketeers, his fascination with the Godfather films, his many business ventures, and his final years of disillusionment as the Cosa Nostra code he had passionately admired was breaking down, so that he chose to testify against his final boss, John Gotti.
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Brian Masters
Killing for Company
This brilliant psychological study of British serial
killer Dennis Nilsen was, says the author, an "oddity," because
its subject was so "outlandish," so unheard of in the annals
of psychiatry: "Until, that is, Jeffrey Dahmer was arrested . . .
While in the immediate sense of personal impact
Dahmer is unlike Nilsen, being diffident, quiet,
polite, even a little dull, against Nilsen's extrovert loquacity
and self-confidence, their crimes bear such close similarities
of method, manner, and, yes, motive, as to . . . mean that
the Nilsen/Dahmer brand of florid necrophilia could at
last be definable." Masters, better known for his literary
and historical works, has written a classic of true
crime--a penetrating exploration of not just the crimes, but
the mind, of a serial killer. Especially fascinating
are excerpts from Nilsen's journals and a collection called
"Sad Sketches: Monochrome Man" of drawings and handwritten
prose/poetry about the victims. The book includes a postscript
by a forensic psychiatrist, and a bibliography.
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Dennis McDougal
Angel of Darkness
Randy Kraft is believed to have committed over 60 murders before he was apprehended by California troopers in 1983. He kept a meticulous score card and photos of his killings in his small brown Toyota. The young men died in agony--tortured with an automobile cigarette lighter, often impaled and sexually mutilated. Surprisingly, though, Kraft is not very famous. Perhaps that's because he killed only men--hitchhikers and patrons of gay bars. Perhaps it's because he never spoke about his crimes: he maintained the winsome smile and shy-guy pose that had served him well as a bleached-blond computer consultant in Orange County. Even his lover of many years, a gourmet candy maker who bought a house with Kraft, never suspected. Dennis McDougal (author of Mother's Day and In the Best of Families) tells the story effectively, combining extensive research and well-paced narrative with a wry, world-weary prose style that has just a touch of mordant humor.
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Dennis McDougal
Mother's Day
"Theresa Cross was a toxic mother, but the
maternity myth blinded, deafened, and silenced those
that might have stopped her." Dennis McDougal, with
his flair for storytelling and his eye for the vivid detail, is
one of the best of true crime writers. In this book he portrays
a very dark character indeed: a woman for whom neither
her life nor her fantasies ever got beyond her sad, narrow
world of severe men, twisted religious ideas, beatings,
sexual jealousy, horror fiction and movies, and obsessive
housecleaning. She had several husbands, one of whom
she killed, until she ended up as a single mother with two
boys and three girls. Then she began to torture and kill the
girls, one after another, as they became old enough that
their beauty made her angry. Prepare to enter a closed-off
nightmare realm, when you read this one.
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Eileen McNamara
Breakdown: Sex, Suicide, and the Harvard Psychiatrist
Paul Lozano was a beloved son of a Mexican American family in El Paso, Texas. In his first year at Harvard Medical School, he had a hard time adjusting to the loneliness and the strange environment. He sought psychotherapy with Dr. Bean-Bayog, a member of the Harvard psychiatry faculty. She told him to think of himself as a 3-year-old, and gave him flash cards with messages like "I'm your Mom--I'll always be your Mom." Paul regressed, and his mental functioning deteriorated. As their relationship grew more peculiar, Dr. Bean-Bayog apparently gave Paul more than 50 pages of her handwritten sadomasochistic sexual fantasies about the two of them. Then she stopped seeing him, because she was adopting a baby boy. Paul killed himself. It's a harrowing story, suspensefully told. As the New York Times writes, "Breakdown: Sex, Suicide, and the Harvard Psychiatrist, its lurid title notwithstanding, makes a serious attempt to arrive at the truth in this strange case." Eileen McNamara also uses the case as a springboard for discussing broader issues such as the need for professional standards and accountability in psychotherapy.
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[All reviews copyright © Amazon.com, Inc. 1997-8]
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