Author: Yazoo
Friday, 22 March 2002 - 08:32 pm |        |
Ally, please move this topic if it belongs under another thread.
Has anyone read the non-fiction works of Virginia McConnell -- Arsenic Under the Elms or Sympathy for the Devil?
The first covers a murder in Connecticut in the 1890s; the second, a murder-he-didn't-do-it piece about Theo Durrant, accused/convicted/hung for murdering a women in/"laid-out" in a church.
If any of the Casebook's fellow crime writers know her, do you know if she plans anything on JtR?
Thanks,
Yaz |
Author: Christopher T George
Saturday, 23 March 2002 - 03:44 am | |
Hi, Yaz:
Nice to hear from you as ever! I don't know these titles. I was interested though to note though that McConnell's Sympathy for the Devil is on the same topic that Robert Graysmith wrote about in his puffed up pseudo-Whitechapel murders book, The Bell Tower: Jack the Ripper in San Francisco about the Leo Durrant case in San Francisco where Durrant was convicted of the 1896 murders in the church--although Zodiac author Graysmith, in a deft sleight of hand, manages instead to finger the pastor of the church as both responsible for the Frisco murders and the Whitechapel crimes eight years before. Not a book to be recommended: the Whitechapel aspect seems almost tacked on as if Graysmith's publisher persuaded him that to sell the book he had to make it a Ripper book. Ugh.
All the best
Chris |
Author: Yazoo
Saturday, 23 March 2002 - 09:01 am | |
Hey Chris:
Thanks. McConnell receives high praise from customers on Amazon.com. I was impressed by the constant refrain that she knew how to capture "the times" in her prose.
So far, she's kept to American crime, it seems. But perhaps she may turn to Whitechapel.
As for, R. Graysmith...ugh, indeed!
Yaz |
Author: Michael J. Meade
Thursday, 16 January 2003 - 12:57 pm | |
I've read both of Ginny McConnell's books and exchanged several e-mails with her. We discovered each other as a result of our mutual loathing for Graysmith's book.
Both of her books are very good. I highly recommend them. Yaz, I should mention that her book on Theo Durrant isn't a "he-didn't-do-it", she does believe he was the killer. |
