WWW.WEDNESDAY

 

WWW. WEDNESDAY asks three questions to prompt you to speak bookishly. To participate, and to see how other book lovers responded, click here. 

PS I no longer participate in WWW.WEDNESDAY via that link because her blog won't accept Blogger comments. I mention this only to save you the frustration I experienced trying to link up.

1. What are you currently reading? And Never Let Her Go by Ann Rule. My library's algorithm says I'll like this book, and it's right. But I didn't have to check it out, I already have it. I read in 2001.

 

Ann Marie Fahey had a good job, working for the governor. She had a wide circle of friends. Finally she had a boyfriend she wanted to settle down with. And then she disappeared. It was when the police started looking for her that her secret life came to light: she'd been having an affair with a powerful older man.

 

This book reminds me of vacations. I was in a hotel room in the spring of 2001, moving kind of slow one morning, on a spa getaway, when I saw Mark Harmon on Regis and Kelly. He was promoting the made-for-TV movie based on this book, in which he played the powerful older man. I didn't see the movie but I remembered the title. Months later, in Key West, I was reading the book while sipping a boozy drink onboard Captain Runaground, a completely unseaworthy boat permanently docked and converted to a restaurant. I was alone because my friend Henry had to work that day and besides, he never understood my affinity for this dive. 

 

2. What did you recently finish reading? Nothing but the Night by Greg King and Penny Wilson. 19-year-old Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, were Jewish, gay, and intellectual. They were also very twisted and in 1924, they kidnapped and killed 14-year-old Bobby Franks just for fun. They wanted to toy with authorities and see if they could pull off "the perfect crime." They could not. They got caught in no time (little more than a week), and that was with crude 1920s-era forensics. Their wealthy parents hired no less than Clarence Darrow to save them from the death penalty in the first "trial of the century."

 

This book did a very good job of invoking Jazz Age Chicago. WWI had been an earthquake. The old rules suddenly didn't apply, and society was in tumult. Before I picked up this book, I didn't realize that the Leopold, Loeb and Frank families lived within three blocks of one another. This made it easy for the press to put the Kenwood neighborhood under siege. I was also surprised by the condensed time frame. Poor Bobby was murdered in May, and Leopold and Loeb were sentenced in September (4 months). Justice moved faster in 100 years ago. For example, in the next "trial of the century," Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman were found dead in June 1994, and OJ Simpson was acquitted in October 1995 (16 months).

 

Still, I didn't love this book, and not just because Leopold and Loeb were odious. The authors made some rather sensational claims and didn't back them up. It felt as though they were just saying shit to make their book stand out among the true crime tomes. Too bad. This case gets under my skin because the murder was so pointless. I want to learn why it happened, not to hear baseless conjecture. 

3. What will you read next? I don't know.