52 in 2011
May. 24th, 2011 04:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lumineaux41. Satan's Circus by Mike Dash
This book promised me "Murder, Vice, Police Corruption, and New York's Trial of the Century." What it delivered was tedium. With footnotes. Now, I have a fairly high tolerance for tedium. I like reading history books with footnotes. I also like the true crime genre. This book should have worked for me. That it didn't is a bad sign.
The book recounts the true story of Charles Becker, a policeman in late 19th and early 20th century New York, when policing was really just another branch of organized crime with less snazzy clothes. Charles Becker was arrested allegedly for arranging the murder of Herman Rosenthal, a fairly unsuccessful professional gambler, who was threatening to expose Becker's particular racket. It's fairly unclear to this day whether Becker was actually involved in plotting Rosenthal's murder -- even in the most off-hand "rid me of this turbulent priest" sort of way -- or simply framed by gamblers who knew the D.A. was looking for a big publicity case. Becker eventually was convicted and executed for the murder.
It takes Dash and excruciatingly long time to get to the murder and the trials. I wouldn't mind so much if the background details he choses to pad the first half of the book were remotely interesting, or told in an interesting way. Dash does his best with small, discrete incidents. But when trying to paint a picture of the Satan's Circus section of NYC in the early 20th century, he just sort of blathers. Hordes of characters move on and off the stage without making much of an impression. After a while, all of the gangsters, gamblers, politicians and vice lords sort of blend together.
I perked up once Becker got to his first trial simply because the Judge was so spectacularly bad, paving the way for an eventual reversal on appeal. I think any other reader would have given up well before Becker was even arrested.
The true sin of this book was that, as boring as it was, it never managed to put me to sleep.
This book promised me "Murder, Vice, Police Corruption, and New York's Trial of the Century." What it delivered was tedium. With footnotes. Now, I have a fairly high tolerance for tedium. I like reading history books with footnotes. I also like the true crime genre. This book should have worked for me. That it didn't is a bad sign.
The book recounts the true story of Charles Becker, a policeman in late 19th and early 20th century New York, when policing was really just another branch of organized crime with less snazzy clothes. Charles Becker was arrested allegedly for arranging the murder of Herman Rosenthal, a fairly unsuccessful professional gambler, who was threatening to expose Becker's particular racket. It's fairly unclear to this day whether Becker was actually involved in plotting Rosenthal's murder -- even in the most off-hand "rid me of this turbulent priest" sort of way -- or simply framed by gamblers who knew the D.A. was looking for a big publicity case. Becker eventually was convicted and executed for the murder.
It takes Dash and excruciatingly long time to get to the murder and the trials. I wouldn't mind so much if the background details he choses to pad the first half of the book were remotely interesting, or told in an interesting way. Dash does his best with small, discrete incidents. But when trying to paint a picture of the Satan's Circus section of NYC in the early 20th century, he just sort of blathers. Hordes of characters move on and off the stage without making much of an impression. After a while, all of the gangsters, gamblers, politicians and vice lords sort of blend together.
I perked up once Becker got to his first trial simply because the Judge was so spectacularly bad, paving the way for an eventual reversal on appeal. I think any other reader would have given up well before Becker was even arrested.
The true sin of this book was that, as boring as it was, it never managed to put me to sleep.
