The accused sounds like a wrongo, but he may have a case...it
looks like
the police investigation was severely botched, and, same old
story, the
cops may have made the case fit the suspect, not the other
way around...
Perhaps the best true crime book I read was Redrum by Kirk
Makin, about a
guy accused of murdering the little girl next door. He's
since been proved
innocent by DNA, but he went through a couple of trials, and
served time,
before eventually being cleared of all charges... (No double
jeopardy in
Canada; if it had been the States, he's probably have fried
by now...).
It's an utterly fascinating book, full of incompetent cops,
lawyers, small
town predjudice, grandstanding victims, families torn apart,
media frenzy,
and tantalizing leads that were completely ignored, all
swirling around an
innocent man... The style isn't really hardboiled, but the
situation
is...in fact, the book, which won the Arthur Ellis award for
true crime
(sorta a Canadian Edgar), was the spark that led the way for
a new trial...
It makes you think about all these true crime books out
there, and how
"true" they really are...
"Don't it make ya feel ashamed,
To live in a land where justice is a game..."
from Hurricane by Bob Dylan
(which, I guess, is a true crime song...)
P.S. How's the crossword going, Pete? How about posting it
for all of us?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Kevin Smith
The Thrilling Detective Web Site
http://www.colba.net/~kvnsmith/thrillingdetective/
It's summertime, and the living is cheesy...
What are you reading this summer?
Tell us in this month's P.I. Poll...
#
# To unsubscribe, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to
majordomo@icomm.ca.
# The web pages for the list are at http://www.vex.net/~buff/rara-avis/.