Mark Shaw (2) (1945–)

Having seen a great many episodes of "What's My Line", I knew that Dorothy Kilgallen was a much beloved member of the panel. I didn't know how popular she was at the time, nor how widely read her syndicated column was.

I learned a great deal of information about this lady as I read this book. It was fascinating. Knowing very little about the circumstances surrounding her death, I was hooked by the author's very plausible scenarios. This is definitely a death that was at the least mishandled show more and at the most a murder/coverup job.

Watching Dorothy on the TV show is always a delight. I wish that somehow the exact circumstances of her death were known. show less

Dorothy Kilgallen (1913-1965) was a triple threat: she was a powerful syndicated newspaper columnist, a popular panelist on TV's What's My Line, and a dogged investigative reporter who was determined to uncover the truth about the JFK assassination. When she died as the result of mixing alcohol and sleeping pills, her untimely passing was anything but an open-and-shut case.

Author Mark Shaw reopens the file on Dorothy Kilgallen. After ruling out suicide and accidental overdose, he examines show more the various motives of the many people who might have wanted her dead. Frank Sinatra, the Mob, the CIA, Kilgallen's estranged husband and one of her alleged lovers all come under his investigative lens. Relying heavily on interviews with her two hairdressers and a biography of Kilgallen by the discredited author Lee Israel, he concludes that none of the suspected murderers can be ruled out. Conjecture and conspiracy theories abound.

Without a doubt, The Reporter Who Knew Too Much is the worst-prepared book I've ever seen presented for sale by a publishing company. The writing is almost unbelievably bad, and the copyediting is worse. Howlers that got past the editor include "Groucho Marks" (sic) and "Renassance (sic) woman". Kilgallen's slender father is referred to as "a tadpole (sic) of a man", I think the author may have meant "beanpole". Perhaps the book's most egregious fault is that the right-hand heading gives the title as "The Reporter That Knew Too Much," which is not only ungrammatical, it is incorrect.

Recommended only for the small subset of hardcore conspiracy theorists who are obsessed with the Dorothy Kilgallen case. show less

A fascinating tale of a fascinating, albeit not 100% likeable, woman. Shaw does a great job structuring his story so that it's constantly intriguing and lively. He does, in the end, seem a little overly biased in her favor. He wonders why history has forgotten her, and while I firmly agree, she should be remembered, the fact that her funeral was lightly attended is very significant, and Shaw sort of glosses over that.

Recently old black and white episodes of the panel game show “What’s My Line?” started appearing in my YouTube recommendations and I’ve started watching them regularly. One of the regular panelists, newspaper columnist Dorothy Kilgallen, has impressed me with her perception and analytical reasoning. I wanted to learn more about her, so I searched for a biography and found this one in the public library’s OverDrive collection.

This book isn’t as informative as I hoped it would be. show more Ms. Kilgallen died after ingesting a mixture of alcohol and sleeping pills, presumably having either accidentally overdosed or having taken her own life. The author of this book believes that Kilgallen was likely murdered because of her investigation into the murder of President Kennedy and the subsequent murder of Lee Harvey Oswald. Kilgallen’s file on the murders disappeared following her death and has not been seen again. Shaw speculates about the motives various people and organizations (including government agencies and the mafia) would have had to kill Kilgallen, but he produces no incriminating evidence. Shaw uses an unconventional citation format that gives the appearance of thorough documentation, but the citations lack important elements that interested readers would need to find and read those sources. (For instance, Shaw will cite a newspaper such as the Chicago Tribune with the year of publication but not the day or the month.) Better editing would have improved the flow of the narrative and eliminated its repetitiveness. show less