Helter Skelter - Vincent Bugliosi with Curt Gentry

Charles Manson needs no introduction, nor do the crimes he ordered from his cult. In broad strokes at least, these are pretty universally known. Helter Skelter gives a greater (and lurid) level of detail than I’d previously known, but the acts themselves werent’ a revelation. But the book isn’t about the crime so much as the punishment, and the quest therefore, and Buglioisi spends most of the pages outlining how the case against Charles Manson was built (including the many missteps made by the LA Sheriff’s Office along the way) and how the trial proceeded.

There is a lot of time spent on amssing evidence and outlining cross-examinations, but the book is well written enough that such legal arcana is intelligble, and even exciting. Bugliosi does a good job of explaining to a layperson why he made the choices he did in presenting evidence, what parameters limited his ability to share certain facts with the journey, and how the interplay between the judge and the lawyers unfolded.

Despite the focus on the trial, I did learn a lot more than I’d already known about the precise structure of Manson’s cult, and his deeply bizarre belief system, which ultimately became the crux of the case itself. Bugliosi felt that, since Manson did not physically commit the crimes himself, he would need to convince the jury of a motive demented and persuasive enough to goad several followers—most of them women—to undertake acts of startling, savage evil. The book’s title, Helter Shkelter, is thus more than just a catchy term, but really does encapsulate the madness behind the killings—Manson’s twisted belief that he could encite a race war and then (in a jump particularly lacking in self-awareness) lord over the winning Black side post-armageddon.

The writing is brisk and tidy, bereft of flourishes and easy to read. I suspect Bugliosi can portray complex ideas clearl,y given the profession, but whenever a co-writer is pre-faced by “with” and not “and,” I can’t help but suspect that it was them who did the most work putting words to the page (having been in such a situation myself in the past).

For those interested in Manson or in True Crime that favors prosecution over sensationalism, Helter Skelter is worth reading.

The Executioner's Song - Norman Mailer

Gary Gilmore had spent over half of his life in prison when, only several months after getting parole, he killed two men in two separate, cold-blooded, and entirely pointless acts of violence. Both crimes were ostensibly committed during robberies, but Gary didn’t seem that interested in the money and made calculated and deliberate decisions to kill. No one exactly knows why, least fo all Gary.

These events form the fulcrum on which the vast, sprawling narrative of the Executioner’s Song pivots, with the lead-up of Gary’s troubled life pulling down on one end against the counterweight of justice on the other. The result is a powerful, if at times exhausting, work of new journalism, similar in structure to a novel but distinct enough that the subtitle “A True Life Novel” feels more like a bit of marketing than an accurate summary. Mailer uses some of the tools common to novelists—shifting his prose to reflect the points of view of various characters, for instance—but the dry insistance on detail and use of supporting sources feels more journalistic than novelistic.

The story is immense and detailed almost to the point of pedantry, with whole chapters—arguably whole sections—devoted to such anicillary fare as the surrounding media frenzy and quest for life rights. In the book’s second half, Gary becomes almost hollowed out as a figure, the story less about him than about the interests orbiting around him. Still, Gary Gilmore emerges as a complex figure, and Mailer manages to imbue him with a level of humanity that is almost uncomfortabl,e given the atrocity of his crimes.

Mailer’s prose is solid, evocative without hyperbole, shifting sleekly between the florid images of literary fiction and the homespun cadence spoken by the characters who populate the story. I’ve read a couple of his books in the past, but it has been some time and the Executioner’s Song reminded me how much I like his writing.

The Devil in the White City - Erik Larson

I picked up The Devil in the White City a few months after reading another of Larson’s books, In the Garden of Beasts, which chronicled the experiences of the American ambassador to Germany during the rise of Nazism. I greatly enjoyed that book, and so approached Devil with high expectations—especially as the subject matter was inherently intriguing.

The book follows the stories of two men in Chicago in the 1890s: Daniel Hudson Burnham, the driving force behind the creation of the Chicago World’s Fair; and H. H. Holmes, a conman and, arguably, the prototype for every serial killer to plague the 20th century. I’d heard of Holmes before, and knew a tiny bit about the World’s Fair, but there was plenty more for me to learn about both.

One particular way Larson excels is in titles—a small thing, in a sense, but important. In In the Garden of Beasts, he makes symbolic hay out of the fact that the American embassy in Berlin was located on the Tiergatrenstrasse, which translates to animal garden street—or, more poetically, “the street of the garden of beasts.” Similarly, The Devil in the White City evokes a feeling of infiltration and illusion, the idea that a place of wonder can be the perfect place for something dreadful to hide and fester.

Larson jumps back and forth between the two stories regularly, forming a counterpoint of themes that feels striking without seeming forced. The ideas a presented but not spelled out: light and darkness, creation and destruction. Larson’s prose is richer and more lyrical than you’d expect from a work of historical non-fiction, and he uses a lot of dramatic effects more common to a novel to drive the story forward.

While less exhaustive a chronicle than Beasts, the Devil in the White City is even more compelling in the picture it paints, all the more so in that the story it tells is much less known. The horrors or Nazism have been articulated in a hundred plus novels, movies, and television shows, but the more private atrocities of H. H. Holmes remain largely forgotten, despite the fact that, though on a much smaller scale, they betray an equal lack of basic humanity that underpins our society, and that has shown itself time and time again to be much more fragile than we would hope.