The Road to Jonestown by Jeff Guinn Review

By the New York Times bestselling author of Manson, the comprehensive, authoritative, and tragic story of preacher Jim Jones, who was responsible for the Jonestown Massacre—the largest murder-suicide in American history.

In the 1950s, a young Indianapolis minister named Jim Jones preached a curious blend of the gospel and Marxism. His congregation was racially integrated, and he was a much-lauded leader in the contemporary civil rights movement. Eventually, Jones moved his church, Peoples Temple, to northern California. He became involved in electoral politics, and soon was a prominent Bay Area leader.

In this riveting narrative, Jeff Guinn examines Jones’s life, from his extramarital affairs, drug use, and fraudulent faith healing to the fraught decision to move almost a thousand of his followers to a settlement in the jungles of Guyana in South America. Guinn provides stunning new details of the events leading to the fatal day in November, 1978 when more than nine hundred people died—including almost three hundred infants and children—after being ordered to swallow a cyanide-laced drink.

Guinn examined thousands of pages of FBI files on the case, including material released during the course of his research. He traveled to Jones’s Indiana hometown, where he spoke to people never previously interviewed, and uncovered fresh information from Jonestown survivors. He even visited the Jonestown site with the same pilot who flew there the day that Congressman Leo Ryan was murdered on Jones’s orders. The Road to Jonestownis the definitive book about Jim Jones and the events that led to the tragedy at Jonestown.

This is probably the most hyped up nonfiction book of the year, and I have been wanting to read it since it came out. But every time I went to my library, the damn thing was checked out, until recently. Like most people, I don't really know much about Jonestown apart from the fact that it was a cult and Kool-Aid references (always wondered how that brand got away from that). Well, now I know more than I think I ever needed to about Jim Jones and his Peoples Temple.

I was also super impressed that Jim Jones Jr gave the book a positive review on the back. Blurbs never draw me because I rarely trust them, but Guinn definitely chose the right one to put on the back. 

I always thought it was funny that cults were a big thing in the 1960s, a time widely billed as the age of individuality, and also that those individuals were the ones to fall prey to cults. The Road to Jonestown reminded me of this because the main people Jones targeted weren't uneducated, backwoodsy people (usually the cult member stereotype) but instead urban blacks and college-educated whites who embraced him and the uneducated who viewed him with scorn. The book points us to the idea that he targeted the idealist in them, the people who fervently believe or want to believe in some ideal society. 

The book's biggest strength, though, is that it doesn't try and paint Jim Jones and by extension The Peoples Temple as being all bad, instead, it doesn't hesitate to show that there was a lot of good done by the people of The Peoples Temple. Jones' biggest failure, it would seem, was leaving Indianapolis. He did appear to have a genuine interest in helping raise people up, and he was an effective preacher. He could have become a white, 60s version of someone like Al Sharpton, and if he moved further down south he probably could have been even more successful (of course, this is all provided he got those serious mental problems under control). I mean, sure, maybe he wouldn't have been well liked and most people would still think of him as being a snake oil salesman, but what evangelist preacher isn't even a little bit shady? But once he left for Brazil and then California, everything fell apart for him.

This is an impeccably researched and easy to read nonfiction novel, a perfect one-stop book for those even a little bit interested in Jim Jones. Seriously, forget the Wikipedia page and YouTube documentaries, this book has everything you could ever want to know and much you didn't ever even need to know. Highly recommended.

9 out of 10

Shallow Graves by Maureen Boyle Review

Eleven women went missing over the spring and summer of 1988 in New Bedford, Massachusetts, an old fishing port known as the Whaling City, where Moby Dick, Frederick Douglass, textile mills, and heroin-dealing represent just a few of the many threads in the community's diverse fabric. In Shallow Graves, investigative reporter Maureen Boyle tells the story of a case that has haunted New England for thirty years.

The Crimes: The skeletal remains of nine of the women, aged nineteen to thirty-six, were discovered near highways around New Bedford. Some had clearly been strangled, others were so badly decomposed that police were left to guess how they had died.

The Victims: All the missing women had led troubled lives of drug addiction, prostitution, and domestic violence, including Nancy Paiva, whose sister was a hard-working employee of the City of New Bedford, and Debra Greenlaw DeMello, who came from a solidly middle-class family but fell into drugs and abusive relationships. In a bizarre twist, Paiva's clothes were found near DeMello's body.

The Investigators: Massachusetts state troopers Maryann Dill and Jose Gonsalves were the two constants in a complex cast of city, county, and state cops and prosecutors. They knew the victims, the suspects, and the drug-and-crime-riddled streets of New Bedford. They were present at the beginning of the case and they stayed to the bitter end.

The Suspects: Kenneth Ponte, a New Bedford attorney and deputy sheriff with an appetite for drugs and prostitutes, landed in the investigative crosshairs from the start. He was indicted by a grand jury in the murder of one of the victims, but those charges were later dropped. Anthony DeGrazia was a loner who appeared to fit the classic serial-killer profile: horrific childhood abuse, charming, charismatic, but prone to bursts of violence. He hunted prostitutes in the city by night and served at a Catholic church by day. Which of these two was the real killer? Or was it someone else entirely?

Maureen Boyle first broke the story in 1988 and stayed with it for decades. In Shallow Graves she spins a riveting narrative about the crimes, the victims, the hunt for the killers, and the search for justice, all played out against the backdrop of an increasingly impoverished community beset by drugs and crime. Drawing on more than one hundred interviews, along with police reports, first-person accounts, and field reporting both during the killings and more recently, Shallow Graves brings the reader behind the scenes of the investigation, onto the streets of the city, and into the homes of the families still hoping for answers.

I read a lot of true crime books, and yet most of the true crime stories I end up picking up take place in the past and are usually combined with historical elements- books like The Devil in the White City, or one I read this summer, City of Light, City of Poison. This is different, as it is only under the true crime label, being about a serial killer targeting drug-addicted women, usually prostitutes, in New Bedford Massachusetts, a quiet little seaside city populated mostly by, like many Southern New England fishing cities, people of Portuguese descent. You get a lot of those ethnic pockets of people in New England, usually from countries you don't think too much about like Portugal or Greece or Poland or even Italy. 

Well, I suppose it's not exactly only a true crime book since it is during the 80s, and there is some context about the time period that needs to be understood. Most people think of cocaine as the rock star drug of the decade, taking LSD's place before it was usurped by ecstasy in the 90s, but the heroin epidemic really started to get bad in the 80s, unfortunately coinciding with the AIDS crisis, as any ER nurse or doctor active in that time period will tell you. Like in today's society, when pain pill addiction progresses to heroin addiction, in the 80s it was cocaine addiction progressing to heroin addiction. And those where the women our killer chose his victims from.

Shallow Graves is written like a mystery novel is, especially the prologue. In fact, the prologue is what lured me in to the book. I wasn't sure if I would like it- I wasn't too crazy about the synopsis- but I decided to read it many because, again, the first page and also because it was short and I wanted to at least make my average for this month. 

Like in the case for many nonfiction novels, I don't really know what to say about it except that I liked it. It was okay, not my favorite nonfiction book I've read this year, but I'm happy I read it. Just a warning though, the ending is a little... unsatisfactory, to say the least, but I enjoyed Shallow Graves enough to recommend it to any causal and more serious true crime fan alike.

8 out of 10

The Fact of a Body by Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich Review

Before Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich begins a summer job at a law firm in Louisiana, working to help defend men accused of murder, she thinks her position is clear. The child of two lawyers, she is staunchly anti-death penalty. But the moment convicted murderer Ricky Langley’s face flashes on the screen as she reviews old tapes―the moment she hears him speak of his crimes―she is overcome with the feeling of wanting him to die. Shocked by her reaction, she digs deeper and deeper into the case. Despite their vastly different circumstances, something in his story is unsettlingly, uncannily familiar.

Crime, even the darkest and most unsayable acts, can happen to any one of us. As Alexandria pores over the facts of the murder, she finds herself thrust into the complicated narrative of Ricky’s childhood. And by examining the details of Ricky’s case, she is forced to face her own story, to unearth long-buried family secrets, and reckon with a past that colors her view of Ricky's crime.

But another surprise awaits: She wasn’t the only one who saw her life in Ricky’s.

An intellectual and emotional thriller that is also a different kind of murder mystery, The Fact Of a Body is a book not only about how the story of one crime was constructed―but about how we grapple with our own personal histories. Along the way it tackles questions about the nature of forgiveness, and if a single narrative can ever really contain something as definitive as the truth. This groundbreaking, heart-stopping work, ten years in the making, shows how the law is more personal than we would like to believe―and the truth more complicated, and powerful, than we could ever imagine. 

The nonfiction books I've been picking up lately have been especially good, and continuing that winning streak we have The Fact of a Body. This was one of two extremely hyped up nonfiction crime novels this year, and it seemed much much more interesting than the other one, American Fire, about arson, a crime even more boring than money laundering or other financial crimes. Also, it's by the same author as one of my least favorite books last year. So when looking at both books in the library I only came home with one, this one.

The Fact of the Body is kind of in the same tradition as In Cold Blood, looking at a heinous crime and then looking at the man who committed such an act. Both crimes are roughly on the same side of horrible, the men in In Cold Blood killing four people, including two teenagers, in a home invasion and the man in this book killing a child after maybe sexually assaulting him. Or perhaps he killed the child and then sexually assaulted him. The details were never really worked out. I put these two crimes on the same level because crimes against children are hideous no question. 

After Marzano-Lesnevich establishes the crime and the crime's effects on the people of the town, like Capote she then launches into Ricky Smith's (the man who did it) past. There could be strong parallels drawn between him and Perry Smith. Both come from less than ideal home lives, big families with alcoholic mothers. Both have less than normal mental states, there is something easily pitied about them. While it was easier to pity Perry than Ricky, I can't help but feel something for them both. Of course, I've always been sensitive to people who come across as sad or desperate or childish seeming. I mean, I've been watching The People vs OJ Simpson and I just feel bad for everyone in that show except Shapiro and Cochlan. So really, it's not that hard to garner my pity, I'm pretty susceptible to sob stories, it's mostly why I oppose the death penalty. That being said, I'm not saying that Ricky Smith should be free or be in a mental institution instead of jail, no the man belongs in prison for life, no questions asked, but he doesn't deserve to die.

An interesting question that this book brings up is the question of pedophilia. Can a person with it get help? Can they change? Or are they people who just can't help themselves? I'm not a psychologist, far from it actually, but I don't think they can change. On one hand, the book leads you to pity the pedophile, who tried to get help only to have it fail, but on the other hand... pedophiles hurt children. They aren't kleptomaniacs who don't actually hurt anyone. Children do not and never will understand sex or romantic love, you cannot be in a mutual relationship with a five year old. In the end, I think there is nothing to do but put the pedophile in jail.

Also, I'm pretty sure Ricky Smith has some form of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. The childish, impulsive way he acts certainly points to that, especially since his mother apparently drank steadily throughout her entire pregnancy.

However, I wasn't as taken with the memoir part of the book as I was with the crime part, though I'm sure it was very cathartic to write. 

Marzano-Lesnevich is a very good writer, one who definitely knows how to tell a story, and I can see her going far in the literary world. I liked her style, and how she endeavors to show all sides of the story, and her own perspective on her childhood abuse. While she doesn't claim to speak for all those who were abused as children, likely this book will be very helpful for someone who went through something similar.

In the end, I highly recommend this book to someone who likes crime books or family dramas or both, regardless of which side one falls on the death penalty. I will definitely watch for more of Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich's work.

8.5 out of 10

City of Light, City of Poison by Holly Tucker Review

Appointed to conquer the “crime capital of the world,” the first police chief of Paris faces an epidemic of murder in the late 1600s. Assigned by Louis XIV, Nicolas de La Reynie begins by clearing the streets of filth and installing lanterns throughout Paris, turning it into the City of Light.

The fearless La Reynie pursues criminals through the labyrinthine neighborhoods of the city. He unearths a tightly knit cabal of poisoners, witches, and renegade priests. As he exposes their unholy work, he soon learns that no one is safe from black magic—not even the Sun King. In a world where a royal glance can turn success into disgrace, the distance between the quietly back-stabbing world of the king’s court and the criminal underground proves disturbingly short. Nobles settle scores by employing witches to craft poisons and by hiring priests to perform dark rituals in Paris’s most illustrious churches and cathedrals.

As La Reynie continues his investigations, he is haunted by a single question: Could Louis’s mistresses could be involved in such nefarious plots? The pragmatic and principled La Reynie must decide just how far he will go to protect his king.

From secret courtrooms to torture chambers, City of Light, City of Poison is a gripping true-crime tale of deception and murder. Based on thousands of pages of court transcripts and La Reynie’s compulsive note-taking, as well as on letters and diaries, Tucker’s riveting narrative makes the fascinating, real-life characters breathe on the page.

This has been the year of mediocre nonfiction. None of the books I read were real standouts, despite the fact I did like most of them. But this book. This is the book I wished The Poisoner's Handbook was. I mean, I was happy enough with The Poisoner's Handbook as is, but I loved this one. It reminded me of the way Erik Larsen (of The Devil in the White City fame) writes.

I admit, though, when I first started the parts about Louis XIV's mistresses, I was a bit skeptical. For one thing, this book was not advertised as being about that, and didn't know how well Holly Tucker was going to connect it with the main story. While the connection was, in fact, tenuous, I was still fascinated by the dramatic stories about Louis XIV's mistresses. I felt like I was watching some trashy reality TV show, but a 100 times better because it's about one of the most powerful rulers in French history. I get that some people might be bored by these parts, but I personally really loved them.

And besides, the actual poison stuff was extremely easy to read, as well as the bits about the reform of Paris and the Parisian prison system. It was especially interesting to read about how coroners, often just surgeons or doctors back then, no special training was required to become one, were able to tell how people died just by basic scientific intuition. There were no fancy tests done to tell whether someone died of arsenic or snake venom, instead, they had to compare the effects of that specific poison to an already deceased confirmed poisoned body and tell by that. I always liked reading how people make do with what they have, especially in the days before technology.

And I ended up really liking Nicolas de la Reynie as a main character. He was the kind of guy you'd want to root for in detective novels, someone whose relentless pursual of the truth is admirable. He was truly one of a kind for his time period, especially since he didn't let class stand in the way of justice. While it is true that many of the noblewomen involved in the poison cases he studied did have more cushy prison lives than the women in the Third Estate who were arrested for the same crimes, and some of them got off on lighter sentences, he didn't wave their cases under the rug, and it's entirely likely he was frustrated by the inability of the Arsenal judges to see that a noblewoman of high birth could have committed such heinous crimes. And the cushy prison existence these women led was a matter of necessity, he knew that if he treated them cruelly then he would get nowhere and even perhaps be forced out of his job. De la Reynie really was one of the first in believing that justice is blind.

And oddly, I did still really like certain parts I probably would have hated if they were in a fictional book. For instance, I thought Mary-Anne Mancini was freaking bad-ass, to say the least. Her responses to the judges and her showing up with her husband in one hand and her boy-toy nephew in the other cracked me up. I wouldn't mind reading a book on her, and perhaps the rest of the Mancinis as well.

While reading I couldn't help but think of The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue, probably because both books took place roughly around the same time and some of the subject matter reminded me of it. And frankly, this book is what The Gentleman's Guide should have been like. It didn't need any strange Marina-esque plot or pirates or highwaymen to be interesting. In fact, I was actually a lot more entertained by this work of pure nonfiction than I was by that work of what is advertised as YA fluff fiction. The juicy stuff in here- the sex, the torture (prison torture before execution, not sex torture), the poison- is all stuff that could have been included in The Gentleman's Guide- well, maybe not the torture, but the sex and poison could have been wonderful. Hell, maybe Lee should have dropped the odd alchemy plot and gone with one based on the Affaire des Poisons. I mean, sure, she would have had to push it up a few decades from the late 1670s, early 1680s to the 1720s, but I could have forgiven that if it was based in something as interesting and little known to the general public as this instead of her going with basic early 18th century pop history- alchemy, pirates, Scientific Revolution/Enlightenment, Spain vs France (well, really England by proxy vs France). 

After reading this book I feel the sudden craving to read nonfiction. It happens sometimes, usually after I've finished a really good one. This is my favorite type of nonfiction to read- true, historical crime. Think the stuff Erik Larsen usually writes. The best of both worlds to me, especially since lately I've been unenthused with regular true crime nonfiction. I mean, when the most popular true crime book out now is about a string of arsons that happened to abandoned places nobody cares about with the main message being roughly the same thing that's been said over and over again, you have to wonder about the future of the genre. That being said, I am waiting for my library to get a copy of Killers of the Flower Moon, since I've been vaguely interested in that ever since it came out in April. Still, I'm actually in the mood to read, something I honestly haven't felt at all this month.

9 out of 10

The Poisoner's Handbook by Deborah Blum Review

Deborah Blum, writing with the high style and skill for suspense that is characteristic of the very best mystery fiction, shares the untold story of how poison rocked Jazz Age New York City. In The Poisoner's Handbook Blum draws from highly original research to track the fascinating, perilous days when a pair of forensic scientists began their trailblazing chemical detective work, fighting to end an era when untraceable poisons offered an easy path to the perfect crime. 

Drama unfolds case by case as the heroes of The Poisoner's Handbook—chief medical examiner Charles Norris and toxicologist Alexander Gettler—investigate a family mysteriously stricken bald, Barnum and Bailey's Famous Blue Man, factory workers with crumbling bones, a diner serving poisoned pies, and many others. Each case presents a deadly new puzzle and Norris and Gettler work with a creativity that rivals that of the most imaginative murderer, creating revolutionary experiments to tease out even the wiliest compounds from human tissue. Yet in the tricky game of toxins, even science can't always be trusted, as proven when one of Gettler's experiments erroneously sets free a suburban housewife later nicknamed "America's Lucretia Borgia" to continue her nefarious work. 

From the vantage of Norris and Gettler's laboratory in the infamous Bellevue Hospital it becomes clear that killers aren't the only toxic threat to New Yorkers. Modern life has created a kind of poison playground, and danger lurks around every corner. Automobiles choke the city streets with carbon monoxide; potent compounds, such as morphine, can be found on store shelves in products ranging from pesticides to cosmetics. Prohibition incites a chemist's war between bootleggers and government chemists while in Gotham's crowded speakeasies each round of cocktails becomes a game of Russian roulette. Norris and Gettler triumph over seemingly unbeatable odds to become the pioneers of forensic chemistry and the gatekeepers of justice during a remarkably deadly time. A beguiling concoction that is equal parts true crime, twentieth-century history, and science thriller, The Poisoner's Handbook is a page-turning account of a forgotten New York.

Don't read this book while eating. I mean, unless you're unbothered by lengthy descriptions of minced brain tissue and various experiments done on dogs. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Also, I know nothing about science. I'm not one of those people who watches one episode of CSI and professes to be an expert in the field of forensic science. I do, however, happen to love true crime books and do have some interest in the work of forensic science as a result. In fact, true crime was how I got into nonfiction in the first place, reading books like In Cold Blood and The Devil in the White City and, of course, my beloved Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, which is the only book I can reread on a regular basis (in fact, I like to have a little annual reread of it every year from June to September). So I picked up The Poisoner's Handbook hoping, yes, for some insight on various poisons and the birth of forensic toxicology but mostly for the murder stories. 

The science in this book was easy to understand for someone like me, who gets confused rather easily when it comes to science and math (yes, I know I fully embrace my gender stereotype). I also really appreciated how the science is woven rather seamlessly into the narrative, unlike books like Girls of the Atomic City, which broke up the potentially interesting narrative with entire chapters purely dedicated to dry science. It was more on par with The Devil in the White City, another book that successfully interwove fact with narrative. I will admit though, after awhile I felt a bit bored with the constant tales of experiments and wanted to get back to the murder stories. 

And the murder stories were good. The ones Blum chose were interesting and grabbed my attention, though I wanted more of them. They should have been more of a prominent part of each chapter. I also liked how each chapter was dedicated to a different poison, though Blum didn't stick to it exactly- some poisons were brought up in different chapters other than their dedicated one. 

I did also think that Blum beat the Prohibition horse to death. One or two chapters dedicated to alcohol was fine, but after the third chapter on it I was done with the topic. That being said, it was interesting to have a bit of insight on the politics of the Jazz Age and into the bootleggers. Blum did also tease us with some other interesting criminal activity, like the Black Hand, a group I heard about briefly but know little about (not to be confused with the other Black Hand, the Serbian Independence group that was responsible for the assassination of Franz Ferdinand). And I did like the two heroes Blum chose for her book, Norris and Gettler, as they endeavored to make forensic science a respected field. 

Do I recommend this book? Yes. It was an interesting and relatively quick read, great for any true crime fan, especially one more interested in the forensic side of criminal work. I'm sure someone who is a science fan would like it too, though again I'm not the best judge.

8-8.5 out of 10