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Harry Farrell

Teoksen Shallow Grave in Trinity County tekijä

6+ teosta 95 jäsentä 3 arvostelua

Tietoja tekijästä

Sisältää nimet: Harry Farrell, Harry G Farrell

Tekijän teokset

Associated Works

Reader's Digest Today's Best Nonfiction 21 1992 (1992) — Tekijä — 10 kappaletta

Merkitty avainsanalla

Yleistieto

Sukupuoli
male
Asuinpaikat
San Jose, California, USA

Jäseniä

Kirja-arvosteluja

Finished it this morning. This book had been on my wish list for many years till finally managed to buy a secondhand copy. I can say it was worth the wait.



Maybe not as gripping as some true crime books, Harry Farrell writes with a bit more distance but you must not forget that when he finally got all the documents and trial papers, a lot of people who played a big role in the Abbott case had already died.

It is much harder probably to write about a case that happened long ago, I think of Harold Schechter's great books but I can truly say this author did just as well.

A good writer who even though the case happened more than 60 years ago,managed to grab the attention of readers.

I for one had never heard of this case and yes there have been maybe more cruel and infamous killings this case was really interesting thanks to the excellent writing of the author.

Now I know there is another book about this case where that author thinks Abbott was innocent but checking the reviews of his book ( A Trail of Corn by Keith Walker), the majority of his readers still think Abbott was guilty, even after reading Walker's book.



They (his lawyers) could only try to get him free by pretending that Abbott was framed. They had to cause the girl's items were found in Abbott'house and then later her body was found near his bungalow (very far from where she disappeared)
But apparently he was never asked why someone would frame him or if he was asked he did not know the answer and to me it was all far fetched and really there was never a real suspect besides Abbott.




He was very handsome so I think that was another reason why this case got so much attention back then. His wife Georgia was very pretty as well. In my hardback there were lots of great photo's.
… (lisätietoja)
 
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Marlene-NL | 1 muu arvostelu | Mar 12, 2016 |
The story of the Brooke Hart kidnapping and murder in 1933 was the sensation of not only San Jose, California, but of the entire country at a time when kidnapping for ransom was becoming the crime of choice among brazen criminals. This book was written in 1992, but as far as I know, there isn’t another book which so thoroughly examines this case.
Brooke Hart was a 22-year-old who had just been made vice-president of the department store his father owned in downtown San Jose. He was abducted and then horrifically murdered even before the kidnappers sent their first ransom note. The kidnappers were subsequently captured and a lynch mob hung them in a downtown park.
The writing is pretty pedestrian, but the subject is engrossing, so the pages really fly by. This book spends much focus on the subject of lynching. Was it the right thing to do? Is it ever the right thing to do? Did the state government know beforehand that it was going to happen, and set it up so that there was little interference with the lynching?
Read the book and decide for yourself.
… (lisätietoja)
 
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BooksOn23rd | Nov 25, 2015 |
Shallow Grave is an incredibly detailed, day-by-day account of the disappearance of fourteen-year-old Stephanie Bryan in 1955, and the subsequent search for her and the trial and execution of her presumed murderer, a young accounting student named Burton Abbott. Methods to find missing children were very primitive back then compared to now; if Stephanie had been kidnapped today, an Amber Alert would probably have been issued and while it might not have saved her, it certainly would have lead police to her killer sooner. It is chilling to think that Burton, a skinny, sickly and deceptively bland man, would certainly have gotten away with his crime and very possibly kept on killing had he not been stupid enough (or arrogant enough) to hide Stephanie's belongings in his own basement.

The issue of Abbott's guilt or innocence is controversial even to this day, and though Farrell never outright states his opinion, it's pretty obvious from the writing what he believes. And that's fine. I agree with him.

This is a compulsively readable story; I've re-read my copy so often that some of the pages have fallen out. My only complaint about Shallow Grave is that while there is pretty good characterization of Abbott, Stephanie's personality is less clear. I think this is in part because Farrell chose to interview her brother rather than her sister, who had been much closer to her.
… (lisätietoja)
 
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meggyweg | 1 muu arvostelu | Mar 6, 2009 |

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