Harold Schechter

There are a lot of really good poems in this, but don’t do what I did and read it cover to cover. It gets heavy fast, when you do that. It weighs on a body.

This is a lot like short story collections for me, in that some poems hit harder than others and some just fell flat, but I liked the variety and the diversity of the perspectives and types of poem and most of the poems I didn’t like (or didn’t get) I could still appreciate the technique of. There are condemnations of and show more meditations on death and murder galore, as well as explorations of the states of minds of killers, which were probably the darkest bits for me. That and the descriptions of the acts.

Particular favourites include “Fall River Historical Museum”, “Naked City”, “The Good Shepherd: Atlanta, 1981“, “Whitechapel Nights”, “On the Turning Up of Unidentified Black Female Corpses”, “Wi’-Gi’E”, “Crime Club”, and pretty much all the murder ballads.

If you have morbid tastes like I do, and you occasionally find yourself in the mood to read about death, true crime, and serial killers, I certainly rec this. It’s a strong collection with something for everyone, as long as their taste runs dark. Definitely not a collection for everyone, though!

Warnings: Death, murder, gore, dead bodies, sex crimes, abuse, slavery, entitled white men, racism. One poem that hints at a coming lynching. Poems from the POVs of killers. Covers Matthew Shepard, Ed Gein, Jeffrey Dahmer, Richard Speck, Susan Smith, the Atlanta, GA child murders of 1981, the Virginia Polytechnic shootings of 2007, and the Athens, GA shooting of 2009. Some poems unfriendly to trans and gay people. (Ask and I can give titles and page numbers.)

8/10 show less

The United States was paralyzed by The Depression when a series of child murders incited a national panic about killer pedophiles. Reports from the FBI in the media about these cases riled the downtrodden masses into hysteria about supposed huge numbers pedophile sex criminals targeting American children. Turns out, those types of crimes, while scary, terrifying and horrible, were not increasing in number at all, but the public was in a particularly vulnerable state and susceptible to show more hysteria and fear. Panic, part of the Bloodlands Collection from Audible/Amazon Originals outlines some of the child murder cases that incited the fear about pedophile sex perverts in 1937.

The Bloodlands Collection gathers six true crime stories by Harold Schechter. Schechter is also the author of several true crime novels. I listened to the audio version of Panic. The audio is just over 1.5 hours long, so an easy, short listen. Steven Webber narrates. He reads at a nice even pace and has a good voice. Even with my partial hearing loss, I was easily able to understand and enjoy the entire audio book.

I found Panic to be interesting, informative and poignant even after the passing of 81 years. Sensationalized reporting in the media can still incite emotion, panic, and fear in the public even now. And, with the instant news feeds of the internet age, the spread of news reports -- sensationalized, true, false and otherwise -- is lightning quick. I found myself comparing the scare of 1937 to present day panics as I listened. Some things never change. Public sentiments can still be manipulated by the media. In some ways it's even worse now than 80 years ago as information is passed so much faster now, often times with no fact checking whatsoever.

Another great listen in the Bloodlands Collection! I have enjoyed each story. I'm definitely going to check out some of Harold Schechter's other writings. show less

Maniac: The Bath School Disaster and the Birth of the Modern Mass Killer by Harold Schechter is a wonderful example of how true crime books can accomplish so much more than just recount a crime.

Many true crime readers are interested primarily in the crime, in the bizarre pleasure we get from reading the details of a horrific incident. Such a reader will be pleased with this account as we are walked through the background and the incident. Schechter does a phenomenal job of presenting the show more killer, Kehoe, in a way that gives us a glimpse of both the public facade and the internal, private monster. Again, the best of the genre do this to some extent and this is one of the best.

Perhaps where Schechter excels and sets himself apart is in his ability to connect the crime to aspects of society, both contemporaneous to the crime and into present day. He begins in his introduction painting the larger societal and historical picture into which he then fills in the details of this particular crime.

I highly recommend this to true crime readers as well as readers who enjoy thinking about how and why so many events disappear from our collective memories while others, often no more heinous, leave a long term mark. The reader gets the excitement expected with true crime along with some analysis about what makes such a crime more or less memorable.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley. show less

This was just the thing for a couple days spent resentfully nursing a nasty cold: Nyquil, kleenex, flannel PJs, and a juicy true crime book. Living in the Chicago area, I was interested in the "local" angle too. I raised an eyebrow over an author who "specializes in serial killers," but Schechter knows his job. Briskly paced, thoroughly researched and as gory as you could want. He's also a little full of himself, making fun of the breathless writing of the yellow journalism of the time of show more the story, but doesn't stint on the "diabolical," "ghastly," horrifying," etc. adjectives himself. As others have pointed out, he can set your teeth on edge with his insistence on Belle's homely appearance (the cover photo doesn't make her look so bad, really), casual use of racial epithets, etc. And it's not his fault that no one has ever been able to verify what actually happened to Belle in the end. I had not heard of her before, so this was all pretty interesting stuff to me, including the courtroom jousting, which others found boring. A few more photos might have been a good addition - I was Googling on my iPad to see what some of these folks looked like. A pretty decent true crime horror story for someone who isn't normally that into such things, but it killed some sickly hours for me, so I'm happy. show less