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Title: Deranged by Harold Schechter ISBN: 0-671-02545-7 Publisher: Pocket Books Pub. Date: 01 October, 1998 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.38 (39 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: The Stuff of Nightmares
Comment: This is a fascinating and often bloodchilling account of Albert Fish, whose perversions and brutal murder of a little girl shocked America in the early '30s. I would recommend it to any reader with an interest in notorious criminal cases or abnormal psychology. But like many books in this genre, there are no reference notes and scant information about the sources. I can believe that Schechter did his research in the newspaper files and court documents, and he was able to interview Fish's defense lawyer, an elderly but still alert man at the time of writing. But I can't accept the author's novelistic liberties in describing gestures, vocal inflections, some of the dialogue he puts in people's mouths, or the way he occasionally enters into a person's "private" thoughts. He couldn't possibly verify these things, and sections of the book read like a piece of slick pulp fiction. Among the photographs are an image of Grace Budd's skull that Fish had dumped behind a stone wall and a night-time view of the secluded cottage where he murdered the girl -- these are just as disturbing as Schechter's lurid prose. (Though the author fails to acknowledge it, this same material was covered in Mel Heimer's "The Cannibal," which was published twenty years before his own book.)
Rating: 5
Summary: Excellent, thorough account of a truly bizarre killer
Comment: Calling Albert Fish bizarre or even deranged is almost an understatement. Fish is the strangest murderer [possibly serial murderer] that I have read about in eight plus years of reading true crime exclusively. Indeed, one of my crime references describes him wonderfully as a "polymorphous pervert." One of the defense's psychiatrists listed all of Fish's perversions as a exhibit for trial; the list contained 17 items. He was also a religious fanatic, very probably delusional, and looked like everyone's favorite elderly uncle. One example of Fish's perversions was his habit of inserting sewing needles into his groin and rectal areas. There is a photo of an X-ray of Fish's pelvic region in this book that is just stunning; you can count many of the needles and even discern the eye holes!
This is not a book for the squeamish or easily upset; it was hard for me, a long-time reader of true crime, to read some of these things. Regardless, it is an excellent, thorough work of true crime. Schechter discovered that Fish's attorney was still alive, secured his cooperation, and was given access to the lawyer's documents, which, he states, "proved invaluable in my reconstruction of the case." Schechter's reconstruction of the case is full, detailed, beautifully organized, and well written.
I was struck several times during my reading of this book how contemporary this case seems, even though the kidnapping and murder Fish was tried for happened in 1928 [he wasn't caught until 1935]. The media coverage was sensational and pervasive. Fish's trial hinged on the question of his sanity on insanity and there were elements that I see regularly on CourtTV: dueling expert witnesses; the "is he mad or just bad" question that surrounds an insanity plea; and the defense's attempt to shift blame to Bellevue Hospital, where Fish had been committed twice for short periods of time, and even an ill-advised attempt to place some blame on the parents of Grace Budd [the child he kidnapped and killed] for letting a stranger take their daughter on an alleged outing!
Fish was only tried for Grace Budd's murder and kidnapping, but Schechter found two cases, kidnappings in 1924 and 1927, that may well have been committed by Fish.
Schechter has done something that was not easy in this book: he has taken a horrible crime and an even more horrible criminal and made both understandable.
Rating: 5
Summary: Schechter is a master in what he does
Comment: I won't talk too much about the book itself (there are like 40 reviews about it already(, but I have comments about some of the reviews.
First of all, Schechter does an extremely good and professional job about putting things in context. That is what some readers perceived as "uninteresting, boring things that have nothing to do with it" ,etc. Well, these readers are totally wrong. It is important and it is very relevent, as Schechter has understood, to have a context that what happens. The author, in every book I have read by him, contextualise the matter, and everytime it's very well done and very significant. Don't forget that Schechter deals with real stuffm, he's a historian. I find incredibly unfair some of the negative comments made on his work. Obviously some people just don't realise how truly horrid these things are or they stupidly expect things you cannot expect. Schechter cannot invent things that did not take place. Don't listen to anyone bashing his works because honestly he is a very good writer in what he does. His research job is a pure mastery, he is non-biased in everything I ever read of his, totally honest.
I'm telling this because I strongly upset at the, very few, reviews of people who obviously had never touched a book in their lives before. I can't conceive anyone finding Deranged annoying, the very thought makes me think that reviewer was a vegetable. You cannot judge Schechter's work as a work of "fiction" (I hate that word applied to literature anyway, none says paintings are "fiction" even when they depict things that never happened, but anyway) and, besides, his books are not at all boring or anything like that. His writing is great, and for those who still consider it as "poor" or whatever, I'll just remind you that Harold Schechter is a literature professor, not saying that makes a good writer, but obviously those who consider him a bad one, are not able to judge clearly.
Deranged is a book you'll find hard to stop reading, I read it in two days and just wouldn't stop. If you're a honest reader, meaning you're seriously interested in serial killers and human psychology in general, that book will not disappoint you. Now, if you youre only interested in reading striclty "horror" stuff then you should try something else, although I do not understand how anyone could not consider what Fish did as horror, that's something I honestly just don't understand. I guess the bad reviewers of this book are simpliy idiots, that's all I can understand, so don't you listen to them.
Anyway, if you just take a global look at the reviews, most of them give the book a 5 star rating, and it's well deserved. I therefore give it a 5 as well, and a 0 to negative reviews for their total lack of perspective and depth as well as incarnate idiocy.
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Title: DEVIANT by Harold Schechter ISBN: 0671025465 Publisher: Pocket Books Pub. Date: 01 October, 1998 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Fiend : The Shocking True Story Of Americas Youngest Serial Killer by Harold Schechter ISBN: 067101448X Publisher: Pocket Books Pub. Date: 03 October, 2000 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Depraved: The Shocking True Story of America's First Serial Killer by Harold Schechter ISBN: 0671025449 Publisher: Pocket Books Pub. Date: 01 October, 1998 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Bestial : The Savage Trail of a True American Monster by Harold Schechter ISBN: 0743483359 Publisher: Pocket Star Pub. Date: 01 March, 2004 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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Title: A to Z Encyclopedia of Serial Killers by Harold Schechter ISBN: 0671020749 Publisher: Pocket Books Pub. Date: 01 November, 1997 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
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