Reviews
TRUE CRIME
DEADLY GOALS By Wilt Browning, St. Martin's, 298 pages, $5.99 paperback.
POWER TO HURT By Darcy O'Brien, Harper, 516 pages, $5.99 paperback.
THE COED CALL GIRL MURDER By Fannie Weinstein and Melinda Wilson, St. Martin's, 295 pages, $5.99 paperback.
By Jamie Agnew
Owner of Aunt Agatha's
I'm a binge person - to paraphrase De Quincy, something in me defeats the power of steady exertion, but encourages preternatural paroxysms of intermittent power. After a steady diet of books that are de riguer, that are classics, that have to be read, I develop an insatiable craving for that junk genre, true crime, l'm three books into my current spree, and they've provided some fine moments, but my jones has yet to be satisfied.
I started out with "Deadly Goals,' which is the story of Pernell Jefferson, a charismatic, ex-NAIA football star who murdered his girifriend. Written in an overwrought, sentimental style, it's basically an extended People article, a fairty impressive marshaling of facts, but a bare scratch on the surface of the significance of the crime or the time.
It has its satisfying true crime moments however, which mostly come from our foreknowledge - the relief as Pernell's first few girlfriends escape his murderous, controlling rages, the dramatic moment when the victim first meets the eyes of her future lover and killer, and the always special scene where the hunter's dog uncovers something strange and foul smelling in the woods. What this book doesn't dig up, however, are the societal and psychological forces that turned a personable young black man into a monster full of steroids and rage, and a young woman into a fearful victim who can find no altemative to his abuse.
Just as the spirits of O.J. and Nicole hover over "Deadly Goals," Darcy O'Brien's "Power to Hurt" brings to mind Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill. The winner of the 1997 Edgar award for best True Crime book, "Power to Hurt" is the ponderous, overlong chronicle of Judge David W. Lanier, the major political and legal player in a small Tennessee town. Lanier is a man who developed "a sensibility in which sex, hate and the lust for power were so intertwined as to be indistinguishable." His harrassment, assault and rape of a woman who carne to him "unstable, insecure and dependent on the Judge's power over divorce, child support, custody and employment," was anything but sexy - an extremely crude and childish acting out of the institutional sexism he so firmly upheld.
The book also centers around the life of Vivian Forsythe, who despite a life of confusion, sex and drugs, becomes a powerful witness against the Judge, "the key instrument in his downfall." Her unshakable, painfully truthful testimony produces the trial's "peak experience ... something very strange and powerful and horrible," and results in the Judge's only felony convictions. (Shockingly, a panel of fellow judges overturned the jury's verdict, and the Judge was free at the time of this edition's publication.)
The strengths of "Power to Hurt" are deep - a view of crimes and lives too often unreported, a keen dissection of the maggoty underbelly of the too often idealized small Southern town, and an endorsement of the need for Federal protection of civil rights. These points are made in an overdetermined way, however, with lines like "How complicated this thing called justice is, Bill was thinking," as if O'Brien doesn't trust the true crime reader to appreciate the story he's telling. Maybe if he had called it "Sex Crime Judge," he might have been inspired to be more direct.
Starting with its catchy title, "The Coed Call Girl Murder," cuts right to the chase, even presenting the body discovery scene in the prologue. The case is interesting, and perhaps familiar, that of Tina Biggar, the attractive Oakland University student who went from doing research on AIDS and prostitutes to doing jobs for an "escort service" to being murdered by a "client." Tina's psycholgy classes and "Pretty Woman" fantasies didn't include the prostitute's first rule of never making things personal, and she was unprepared for Ken Tranchida, a smalt time con man and big time loser, who turned violent when his crimes were discovered.
But Weinstein and Wilson make very Itttle of their material. If "Power to Hurt" is too cooked, "The Coed Call Girl Murder" is way too raw, the bare bones, sprinkled with descriptions of Tina's "thousand-watt smile," and her desire to "find out what make people tick." Near the end of the book the authors quote Tina's father, Bill, as saying that "there are no answers to the why questions." Maybe so, but I would have like at least a little speculation as to why Tina, "a good girl from a good home," became fatally immersed in the world of pagers, garters, stockings, condoms, charge slips and K-Y jelly.
So none of the above books completely satisfied my true crime hunger, or even left such a bad taste in my mouth that I lost my appetite. Next is "Night Stalker" by Philip Carlo, 576 pages on the life and crimes of Richard Ramirez. Maybe that will do the trick.