Book #4 Remember Me Like This by Bret Anthony Johnston

Remember Me Like This

In Bret Anthony Johnston's novel Remember Me Like This,  Justin Campbell has been missing for four years, his family have buckled under the strain and are fractured, but are by turns attempting to carry on with their lives. His Mom volunteers in deliberate anonymity at a sea-life centre, his brother hangs out at a skate park and is on his way to getting his first girlfriend, his father is having an affair. As his father departs from his regular rendezvous with his mistress, his phone rings, the police believe they have found Justin.
 
Back in the day, I used to watch a fair bit of Oprah, and as a result came across the story of Shawn Hornbeck, a boy who went missing in 2002. UK readers may not be familiar with the case. He had not been as many thought, murdered, but had been abducted and held captive by a paedophile who police only caught 4 years later when he struck again. 

Justin Campbell's backstory is pretty much that of Hornbeck. In fact, it does not so much echo the case as replicate it. Like Hornbeck, Campbell was living within an easy distance of his family and had seen missing posters and appeals for his whereabouts, though allowed certain freedoms, he remained in the psychological thrall of his captor and was afraid to leave.

I've considered before in reviews how I feel when fiction stories borrow heavily from true life events. In this particular instance it feels a bit grotesque - despite the frankly unmistakeable similarity, no acknowledgement is made towards the Hornbeck case in the Authors Note. Given that the boy spent his adolescence being exploited, this feels like further exploitation by somebody he's probably never met for creative gain and profit. I would definitely like to know if Johnson sat down with Hornbeck or his parents at any stage.    

But then, fiction and the real life inspiration diverge as it is doubtless all fiction bar the backstory itself. Johnson at least has the decency not to focus on what happened to Justin during those years, instead focusing on the period of adjustment his family go through upon his return. Justin's own perspective is silent, leaving him an enigma. The authorial point of view switches between parents, brother and grandfather, and this is a really interesting and worthwhile story.

You last see your son when he is 11, and he returns a 15 year old, you live in the shadow of the perpetrator filled with hatred and devastation - your child is not forthcoming about what happened and you really don't want to ask. He is both the son and brother you remember, and yet a stranger with unfathomable behaviour and secrets.  

In that respect by focusing on the psychology of the family both how they coped with his disappearance and again with his reappearance, it was a really interesting story to read.

It did have a tendency towards a soap opera effect - and whilst the epilogue is there to keep you guessing the prologue is somehow superfluous, containing a frustrating spoiler element about an aspect of plot that didn't need spoiling.  The prose has that "American tone" that I so often dislike, and there were sections that I found quite dry.

Though it has an interesting and unique angle to pose as a novel, can it really be called original? And more than this is it not somehow an insult to give a speculative public narrative to a very real and intense private pain?

Verdict : 7/10

2015 Challenge : Despite the lack of acknowledgement, I'm calling this my book based on a true story. 

Book #17 In Cold Blood by Truman Capote

In Cold Blood

Length Of Time In Possession : Roughly 6 months 

In Cold Blood is the infamous true crime work by Truman Capote. The book is a journal of a serious crime from the 1960's in which four members of the same family were brutally murdered. Motive unknown. Capote takes the crime from its very beginning to the ultimate conclusion of the sentence, focusing both upon the lives of the killers and the victims.

The research is incredible and the lives and the psychologies of all involved are dealt with in depth. 
As you read about all American girl Nancy Clutter, her honest hard working father, sensitive brother and mentally ill mother, it is almost like reading a novel as the attention to even the small details is huge.

With the criminals too we get not just the crime they committed but their full back story, their personal histories and the views of their families.

The crime took place in Kansas and Truman Capote's curiosity was aroused by a small 300 word article in the New York Times, stating the brief facts of the case. Accompanied by his friend, the even more famous writer Harper Lee the two went to Holcomb, Kansas and gaining the trust of the locals, took thousands of pages of personal accounts, before publishing five years after the crime.

As a work, it is seminal, as it was the first of it's kind, and all other true crime works follow in its footsteps, particularly those with a fictional rather than factual style and tone, I think particularly of Midnight In The Garden Of Good And Evil.

There have been several films made about this story, both about the murder itself and Capote's involvement in documenting it.

I would recommend this novel not only if you like Crime/True Crime but if you like well written non fiction in general

8/10

Destination : I borrowed this, and will return it. 

#Book 51 Fred and Rose by Howard Sounes

Fred and Rose

I have previously shied away from reading 'true crime' books, because of their often sickening content and Fred and Rose is in fact the first such book I have read. I read it after I so recently watched Appropriate Adult, the excellent BAFTA winning drama starring Emily Watson and Dominic West.

I was young when 'The House Of Horrors' murders occurred but I remember watching News At Ten each night as yet another name was added to the list and thinking it would never end. I realised watching Appropriate Adult that I remembered very little of the case and that was part of the impetus to read this account by a journalist who reported on it.

It sheds light on the earlier lives of Fred and Rose and how the two personalities combined became an explosive cocktail of deviance. Alone, they would each have been a bad lot, but together reached heights of depravity they would not have reached solo, a desperately unfortunate meeting of minds.

The descriptions of the murders and sexual acts is graphic and at many points disturbed me, made me uncomfortable and made me question why I was reading it, but, turning away from it after I had begun felt like turning away from their victims and the terrible injustices they suffered. It is a competent and thorough expose of the case and provides hitherto unknown background information.

It didn't make for enjoyable reading, nor should it have, but it was a well written record of those terrible events. One wonders exactly how many women are lying out in Gloucestershire unfound. 8/10

Book #61 Midnight In The Garden Of Good and Evil by John Berendt

Midnight In The Garden Of Good And Evil

Published in 1994, Midnight In The Garden Of Good and Evil chronicles the period when New York writer John Berendt lived in Savannah, Georgia and paints a portrait of the town.

In my mind Savannah conjures up Southern accents, cocktails, lovely old buildings, - a dash of Gone With The Wind. Berendt's depiction has all these things in spades. Savannah, in Berendt's depiction is a parochial and insular town which wants nothing to change and there's something quaint and appealing about that in such fast moving times.

To begin with, Berendt seeks to showcase the city through the lives of it's various inhabitants and through them portray the city as a whole. Almost a travel guide with a difference. We meet haughty Jim Williams a self made millionaire antique dealer, his next-door neighbour Lee Adler, a man though high-society is not quite as revered as he pretends to be. We enter the world of exclusive clubs, yacht clubs, golf clubs, bridge parties; everything in my mind that America's Deep South is all about. Jim Williams' Christmas party being the social highlight of the year.

We meet others too, less far up the social scale: Danny Hansford, Jim Williams' borderline psychotic handyman, partial transsexual and drag queen Chablis, a woman with a filthy mouth and some scary behaviour. Then there's Jim Odem, a highly untrustworthy loveable rogue with a succession of piano bars. 

By exploring Savannah from all these angles, we see the city through a kaleidoscope lens and it is beautiful and intriguing and deep. It makes Savannah in my mind as much a must see destination as New York or Boston. I could feel the heat and hear the crickets chirping, I wanted to be there.

Then, something happens. John gets a phonecall from Chablis. Danny Hansford has been shot and Jim Williams arrested for murder. A case of being in the right place at the right time for journalist Berendt, he begins to cover the trial for his book, as Savannah society recoils from the seedy underbelly on its very doorstep.

The story becomes very Gothic in tone as we meet Minerva, a voodoo priestess...

Midnight In The Garden Of Good And Evil is a really evocative book and one which is compelling to read but I have to question certain aspects.   Though Jim Williams was a real person, some other names are changed and I have to question the veracity of some of Berendt's past conversations as I query his ability to recall all of them in minute detail. In some respects then this is rather a blend of fact and fictionalised summation rather than straight up non fiction. In spite of this it was nominated for several non-fiction awards including the Pulitzer.

The book spent a record 216 weeks in the New York Times Bestseller List and I think this is richly deserved. A film was later made by Clint Eastwood in which Chablis played herself, and I'm sure I will watch it sometime.

I recommend reading it in a Southern accent with a mint julep by your side. 9/10

Book #53 The Suspicions Of Mr Whicher by Kate Summerscale

The Suspicions Of Mr Whicher Or The Murder At Road Hill House

Winner of The Galaxy Book Of The Year, British Book Awards 2009, Winner of the BBC Four Samuel Johnson Prize and Shortlisted for The Crime Writers Association Gold Dagger, this book has considerable pedigree. It was also A Richard and Judy Number One Bestseller, but never mind.

In a nice, middle class family, with a nice middle class home in June 1860, a toddler vanishes from his bed in the middle of the night. His bloodied, brutalised corpse is discovered the following day, but who did it? And why?

The Murder At Road Hill House isn't just A Locked Room Mystery, of the sort you see in many Agatha Christie novels or the sort you compete to solve when you play a game of Cluedo. It is THE Locked Room Mystery. The original real-life crime, which inspired popular detective fiction of the era, and the impact of which is still felt in crime fiction today. For those who don't know what is meant by Locked Room Mystery, it is now the fodder of Murder Mystery Weekends. A murder occurs in a country house, the doors were locked for the night, the only possible culprit has to have resided in the house that evening. It's been seen in Poirot, Marple, Doctor Who and even most recently in Steig Larsson's The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo albeit on a grander scale. In the case of Road Hill House, there was no elaborate dinner party involving a vicar, a disgruntled nephew, and a wealthy American socialite; just the Kent family, a husband and wife, seven children and a few servants.     

Jack Whicher was among a new breed of plain clothes detectives recently established by Scotland Yard sent to Wiltshire to help solve the crime, but the locals and the nation at large reject his findings. What emerges is an astonishing picture of just how fallible and frankly rubbish the early judiciary system was in Britain. To question someone of good social standing or class, or of an age or gender that would be unseemly, is considered an affront to decency regardless of grounds, but it is the class system that truly is an over-riding factor. In addition, public speculation was apparently encouraged with any Tom Dick or Harry across the nation as a whole believing they had the right to have a say on the case. Juror meetings were held in public, cross examination was ridiculously biased, and the press were allowed a veritable free-for-all on editorial comment.

The utter lack of respect for the legal process is breathtaking, and Summerscale comments at length at the way in which though Mr Whicher had his suspicions, the nation had its suspicions of Whicher. The very existence of a plain clothes force was again considered an affront to decency, the privacy of the Englishman and his home were at stake. These values apparently worth more than the advantages of modern progress in crime solving. Following the Road Hill House case Whicher finds himself a laughing stock and his career is ruined. Whilst fictional detectives of the type written by Wilkie Collins and Charles Dickens surged in popularity their real-life counterparts were considered 'vile' and 'grubby'.

Where this non fiction book succeeds is in the way in which it brings the story of The Kent Family in the earlier half of the book to life, almost but not quite in the manner of a Victorian novel. Where it slightly falters are the moments in which it begins to read like a PhD thesis, and becomes a bit dry and academic. What is certain though is the phenomenal amount of research and background work Summerscale has put into this book, and the respect it deserves for breathing new life into an old but highly influential tale. 9/10