Douglas PerryBesprekingen

When I saw* Mammoth by Douglas Perry, I knew I wanted to try it- the premise was so good and I had read his Girls of Murder City and really enjoyed it. By the end of the book, I was wondering- what happened?

The book begins with a few stories all around an earthquake that happens in the town of Mammoth- a bank robbery occurs and people are killed "accidentally," the robbers make their escape into the mountain, there is an all girls camp stuck in the mountains unaware of what happened with the earthquake, two police officers are already on their way into the mountain to evacuate the girls camp, and the townspeople have all abandoned the town.

By the end of the book, the two police are chasing after two kidnappers/rapists who they think did the bank robbery, but instead kidnapped the sheriff's wife, which the two police officers found by accident.

I am not sure at which point the book got away from the author, but as a reader, I was left wondering how we got to the point we got by the ending of the book. Some of the stories just kind of disappeared and were left behind (such as the girls in the girls camp) for many chapters or were simply used as a plot device to get us someplace else.

I'll give you an example from the book- the police find the bank open in the abandoned town of Mammoth, they go to find the two people they believe committed the crime, they find the sheriff's wife who has been kidnapped, they hear people are returning to town, and the sheriff himself states in the book that he forgot about the dead bodies in the bank and is now worried that the town will see the bodies. That is right, the sheriff left the bank open, the dead bodies on the ground, and left the scene and essentially forgot about it without taking care of anything there first. This isn't the worst part though. The worst part is this takes a few chapters to pan out and we jump between a few narrators in the midst of this story. What happened?

I think the story simply got away from the author as the book itself is really well written and engaging. I was pulled in from the opening moments of the book and there is an ominous feeling throughout the book. The problem is that feeling never quit pans out to be much of anything and some plot lines that could have been great, never happen. I was left wondering in the very beginning- what would have the book looked like with the police and the bank robbers in the mountain with the girl's camp, where one of the girls is the bank robbers daughter? That is tense! Instead the robbers decide they are going to evacuate the girl's camp to clear out the camp and the robber's daughter is left alone in the camp. I just sat scratching my head at lost potential.

I wish this was a different book as Perry has the writing chops to make a really great book. Sadly, I think Mammoth was too big and something got lost.

I gave this one 2.5 stars, quite sadly.

*I wish to thank NetGalley and Amberjack Publishing for allowing me to read this book in advance. I received it for free from NetGalley in exchange of an honest review.

Interesting story that's rather poorly written. I didn't really care for the over-the-top purple prose used by the author to write about the fate of these women. But the story of how Chicago tried and treated these murderers in the local newspapers as well in the courts is a good one. And learning that the author of the musical "Chicago" was a woman who held her own at the Tribune and among the Hearst newspapers was cool.

Somehow both bland and trashy at the same time. Douglas Perry's The Girls of Murder City focuses on the brief period in 1920s Chicago when a number of women who had almost certainly murdered their husbands or boyfriends were not only acquitted of their crimes but became minor local celebrities—a phenomenon which ultimately inspired the play and later the musical Chicago.

But while the marketing for this book promised a gripping social history, this is really a fairly shallow recounting of the events (Perry mentions in passing that African American women in similar circumstances were treated very differently, but foregoes the opportunity to trace one of their stories and so look with a clearer eye at how whiteness played a role in the construction of the "Beautiful Killers") with some truly awful prose ("Maybe he would take her now, right here on the couch. Yank her underthings off and split her open, with the breeze from the window rolling over them"? Ugh). Forgettable.

A good recounting of the murderesses in Chicago who were arrested and tried, but eventually aquited of their crimes, and then how those trials inspired the Broadway play, and eventually a Tony award-winning musical, Chicago. I found the stories of the women accused of the crimes to be interesting, and Maureen Watkins reporting, with it's biting barbs of satire, to be quite fascinating. Even more so to learn about how Watkins' reporting inspired her to write her play, Chcicago. I enjoyed the book, and learned a bit of history that I was unaware of. Tying that history into a very popular musical, and showing where the inspiration came from was well-done.

Interesting and well written story about how Chicago (the play/movie/musical) came to be and the real women it was based on.

First off. In the extended title of this book, it says "who inspired Chicago". It literally took me half the book to realize "Chicago" meant Chicago, not Chicago. The play, not the city. Before that, I had thoughts about the way the story had been drawn out, and why there was so much time with the reporters and not just with the murderesses (I wanted more murderesses, dammit) and it's a whole different perspective, to be honest. In that light, The Girls of Murder City is fabulously done.

I'm more an ancient history person, and years of reading traditional fantasy has me deeply interested in Western Europe... but something about Chicago pulls me in. From a purely romanticized perspective, Chicago was its own world of blood and deceit and danger. Between The Girls of Murder City and The Devil in the White City, color me officially intrigued in Chicago. The city pulled me into this book, and it ended up being a hybrid of crime history and theatre history and I gobbled it up. I'm sure there is a lot to Chicago that's beautiful and fabulous, but I'm so drawn by its dark history.

Douglas Perry does a fantastic job of laying out the narrative. There were a few times where I thought I heard the same quotes more than once, but as a general rule, the story felt like a story. The best historical narratives, in my opinion, are the ones that bring history to life. The Girls of Murder City makes you curious about Beulah Annan and Belva Gaertner. They're brought to life through various interviews and articles, but they are kept separate from Maurine Dallas Watkins - the reporter who covered their stories in the '20s, and author of Chicago. You'll learn about these women's trials than you will from their Wikipedia articles, and with a little innocence creative eloquence, they fly off the page.

Not just Beulah and Belva, though. Several women of murderesses row - or at least of that period in Chicago history - jump off the page. If anything, Perry makes them seem larger than life, far more stylish and beautiful than they were in actuality. If you're even vaguely interested in the sordid history of the Second City, or in crime history in general, The Girls of Murder City is a fascinating, interesting story and told in such a way that it would hold anyone's attention.

In short? I loved the way the history was told and I enjoyed dipping into this period of history for the first time in several years. If the subject interests you at all, I highly recommend it.

Closer to 3.5 stars. In some ways I felt like a voyeur reading this, though I'm sure everyone involved has been dead for a while.

You know the musical Chicago? Guess what—it's all true!

Crime reporter Maurine Watkins covered the trials of some of a string of women in Chicago charged with killing a man, and watched them declared not guilty through a combination of being young and pretty and having really smart lawyers. The experience angered Watkins, and she used her formidable wit to comment on the show-biz shallowness of the whole ordeal. Fascinating read!

Proving once again that there's nothing new in Chicago crime.

Fame, Lust, and the Beautiful Killers Who Inspired “Chicago” - a Jazz Age true crime account. Available on Hoopla.

Mammoth by Douglas Perry is a so-so novel about a town-wide panic and the aftermath.

Something happens in Mammoth View at the beginning, a small earthquake and then some kind of attack that resulted in everyone fleeing the town in a panic. We don't know what the attack was until the end. Now there are just a few people left. Police Chief Hicks and his deputy are trying to figure out what happened, Billy Lane and his 2 cohorts take advantage of the situation and rob the bank. The two ne'er-do-well Johnson brothers also take advantage of the empty town. King, a radio DJ is leaving town with his girlfriend. And, instigated by Billy, the teen girls running camp up in the mountains evacuates in a rush, but leaves one of the campers behind, Billy's daughter, Tori. Over the next 24 hours chaos ensues, bringing out the worst in people, and perhaps the best in those that endure the rampage of the brothers.

Mammoth is technically well written and contains a whole lot of character development and backstory for multiple characters. The novel is told through short chapters that feature the point of view of several different characters. It is a quick read.

I agree with the reviewers who have said that the focus of his novel got away from Perry. It was about the disappearance of people who all suddenly and swiftly left town, that's intriguing on its own and what led me to read it. Add to it the bank robbery, Tori and the teen girls at the running camp, the DJ, the bad-news brothers.... and suddenly the novel morphed into something else. I could roll with that, but it seemed to swiftly and repeatedly change its focus. Okay, I decided, maybe it was just a character study of these people, but, then, no, it's about something else now. Finally, the disappearance is nothing and felt gimmicky and I was extremely disappointed when it was explained at the end.

Next, there is a whole lot of running up and down the mountain, running here, running there, running, running. I understand that Tori is a runner and will be running, but exactly how much blindly running to and fro would people be doing under these circumstances. Yes, run away from bad guys, but, no, do not run down to an empty town after you've been told everyone left it.

Disclosure: My advanced reading copy was courtesy of the publisher for review purposes.

http://shetreadssoftly.blogspot.com/2016/09/mammoth.html
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1749190214

* Thank you to NetGalley and Amberjack Publishing for an ARC of this book in exchange for my honest review *

Told from the perspective of many varied individuals in or near Mammoth View, California this is a story of their world gone wrong and how they deal with what is happening. That said, I did not really relate to or like any of the characters in the story and wish that I could have. I thought the ending iffy at best and wonder at the naivety of the people in the town even if this took place sometime in the past when it was more difficult to get information easily. Mass hysteria is possible but I am not sure it would unfold as it did in this book. I was at times confused and ultimately believe that I was really expecting something else. I was looking forward to reading this book since I have been hiking and skiing in the area long ago. I guess I should say I was underwhelmed and wished for more but will also say that there are no doubt others who will really enjoy this book.½

I found the book rather bland. Yes the central theme that beautiful women charged with murder in the city of Chicago sparked my curiosity but the unwinding of the story left me wanting more from it. The central figure being the newspaper reporter was rather interesting but once again I felt the story plot was nothing special. I was intrigued that the Chicago Tribune was her paper as I started my career there years ago but not in the news department. I found looking back to those years of newspaper coverage as the major media force now long since replaced by the Internet as these same newspapers slowly fade from relevance. I will be looking again at the latest movie version of "Chicago" to match up events as related to the book now.

Excellent coverage of Ness and how his TV series persona ( and worse, the film version of The Untouchables) are an exercise in myth making and fail to capture the man with all his assets and flaws. Ness has much to commend him on many fronts as he was honest and obsessively dedicated to the mission of dismantling gangster operations. After he moved from Chicago to Cleveland as Public Safety Director, he took on the enormous task of rooting out corruption in the Cleveland police ranks and battling the underworld empire there. In the process he made Cleveland a forerunner in using modern law enforcement techniques such as use of patrol cars instead of the foot beat, and establishing profiling suspect systems based on polygraphs, fingerprints, and crime patterns.
Unfortunately, his commitment to his job made his personal life a shambles, leading to neglect of his wife and a divorce. Contrary to his squeaky clean image, Ness was a heavy drinker and womanizer, which would ultimately contribute to his undoing.

Eliot Ness is a fascinating man, best known for his role in leading The Untouchables while chasing Al Capone. Here, Douglas Perry introduces us to the real man behind all the hype. If you've read The Untouchables or seen the movie, you might be surprised to learn how much of Ness's memoir was overblown hype. In fact, Eliot Ness never approved the final manuscript, which he had not actually written, because he died before the book was finished.

I was impressed with the breadth of content here. Aside from the Capone years, we learn about Ness's career as Safety Director in Cleveland, his obsession with corruption, his battle maintaining his reputation, and his transition into business that seemed to be his final downfall. Despite all the good Ness did, he died broke and in relative obscurity.

Perry shows us the human side of the legend, which I find far more interesting than the glamorous view designed to sell books and movies. We're also given a look at what the world was like during this tumultuous period in history, when mafia men were openly running some cities.

The writing itself lacks a bit of personality, coming off a little dry with its 'just the facts' format. But the writing is also clear and precise, and the timeline easy to follow. Definitely a book I'd recommend to anyone interested in Eliot Ness and/or this period of history.

Let me start by saying I'm a sucker for popular history books, and I tend to judge them all against "The Devil in the White City." Perry's coverage of the Chicago murders that eventually inspired the musical Chicago is a very enjoyable read if you like creative non-fiction or even true crime of a certain type. It's fascinating to see the legal and social culture in which these murders were committed, and Maurine Watkins, who is really the main character of the story, comes across as a charming and nuanced figure. Perry is best when he's explaining Watkins' motivations--her ambition and faith and bravado. Clearly, Perry's goal here is partly to rehabilitate Watkins' image in the history books, and he does an admirable job of it. The pacing of the book is excellent--even though you already know the outcome--and while Perry is not quite the wordsmith that Erik Larson is, his enthusiasm for his topic is contagious. Well worth the read if you're a fan of the genre, the era, or even just a fan of the famous Broadway show.

Interesting read about the inspiration behind Chicago. I know the murderesses of Cook County were suppose to be the real focus but the background and information about Chicago author Maureen Watkins was far more interesting.

Read from January 23 to 28, 2011

I really enjoyed this book! It's very well-researched and not in the way that the author just claims it's well-researched, but in the way that there is documentation to prove it.

I feel like I knew that Chicago was inspired by actual events but I didn't know that the musical was a play first. And that the play was written by a woman who was there to cover the REAL trials of women a lot like Roxie and Velma. (Despite what you may read on the Internet, Maurine - the playwright - was always religious!)

Interesting tale of the women murderers of 1920s Chicago and one of the "girl reporters" who covered them. Sometimes disjointed - I kept mixing up Belva & Beulah - but solid storytelling. Apparently he aims to correct some of the myths about the author of the original play "Chicago" (the aforementioned girl reporter) - none of which I was aware of, but she's an intriguing character nonetheless.

I’ve seen the 2002 film of the musical Chicago, I’ve seen the live stage performance, but I never realized just how much of the story was based on fact. Perry tells the nonfiction tale of the actual murderesses, the crimes they committed and the media frenzy that followed in their wake. I thought the book was fascinating because the true story is even more intriguing than the fictionalized stage version.

In 1924 there were a surprising number of murders committed by women in Chicago. Two of the most famous cases involved Beulah Annan and Bella Gaertner. Both women were arrested and tried for murder and both were acquitted. The two women inspired the characters of Roxie Hart (Beulah) and Velma Kelly (Belva) in the 1926 play Chicago (originally called “Brave Little Woman”).

The play was written by Maurine Dallas Watkins. She covered both trials while working as a reporter for the Chicago Tribune. She took a course at Yale on play writing and Chicago was the result. It didn’t become a musical until the 1970s. I did think it was fascinating that Beulah and Belva actually saw Chicago performed live!

The entire time I was reading the book I kept hearing all the songs from the musical in my head. When I read about the defense lawyer I heard “All I Care About” and during the descriptions of Beulah roping her husband into covering for a murder she committed “Funny Honey” was on repeat in my brain.

I related the most to the reporter Maureen. She was originally from Crawfordsville, IN, about 15 minutes from the city where I worked when I was first a reporter at a daily newspaper. I actually covered a few trials in Crawfordsville during that time.

Watkins also reported on the famous Leopold and Loeb case, which quickly overshadowed the coverage of the murderesses’ verdicts. It’s interesting how a piece of news can become a huge deal, or so easily be cast aside depending on what else has happened that day. Like celebrities dying on the same day, Michael Jackson’s death left no room for coverage of Farrah Fawcett’s and the same is true for other major events in history. If it had been a slow news day, the women’s acquittals might have been a huge deal, but instead they were barely noted while all eyes focused on the now infamous Leopold and Loeb case, which inspired the film Murder by Numbers and the play Never the Sinner.

So if you’re looking for a great nonfiction read in the same vein as The Devil in the White City or if you’ve ever been curious about the story behind Chicago, this one is for you.

The Girls of Murder City tells the story of several women accused of murder and held in the women's section of the Cook County jail in 1924 Chicago. It also tells the story of Maurine Watkins, a rookie reporter who makes a name for herself through her coverage of these women, their crimes, and their trials. Watkins later turned her experiences into the play Chicago, which in turn became the basis for the musical and film of the same title.

I picked this up because of my interest in Maurine Watkins and her background as the daughter of a Disciples of Christ minister. However, the book quickly skims over Watkins's life prior to her arrival in Chicago, as well as her life after writing the play.

The book's structure is a little problematic. Leopold and Loeb weren't girls, yet part of the book focuses on their crime and its media coverage. It's included because this crime became the top news story, forcing continuing coverage of the murdering women out of the top headlines.

Overall, the book seems to be carefully researched and well documented. However, I did spot one error. The author states that one of the women in jail for murder, Sabella Nitti, “would be the first woman ever to hang in Illinois.” Most readers probably wouldn't question that statement. However, several generations of my father's family lived in Lawrence County, Illinois, where Elizabeth Reed was the first woman to hang in Illinois in 1845.

Recommended for readers interested in Chicago's history, true crime readers, and fans of the movie or musical.

I am much fonder of the musical Chicago than I probably should be. I’ve never seen it on stage, but the movie version came out at a time when...well, let’s just say that a story about thwarted women who killed their men wasn’t all that far-fetched to me, and I loved “The Cell Block Tango” (still do). I’m not sure when I learned that the show was fact-based, but it was when I read Douglas Perry’s The Girls of Murder City that I discovered just how “ripped from the headlines” - of 1924 - it really is. By the way, the word “Chicago” in the book’s subtitle really is properly offset by quotation marks or a change in font, because it refers to Chicago the show, not Chicago the city; while the “merry murderesses of the Cook County Jail” certainly did captivate the city, I’m not sure how truly inspiring they were. Having said that, Perry’s book is also concerned with another woman - reporter Maurine Watkins, who indeed was inspired to base her first stage play on two of the sensational murder trials she covered for the Chicago Tribune. I think she was pretty inspiring, to be honest.

Perry relies on both contemporary accounts and later works in his exhaustive research for The Girls of Murder City, but the last adjective that describes this work of narrative nonfiction is “dry.” Its primary subject is the consecutive murder trials of “Beautiful Beulah” Annan and “Stylish Belva” Gaertner - the models for Chicago’s Roxie Hart and Velma Kelly - both in court during the spring of 1924 to defend against charges of shooting and killing men who were not their husbands. Both cases were salacious and scandalous, and Chicago’s many newspapers fed the public appetite for news about the glamorous defendants. Women were rarely convicted of murder by Chicago’s all-male juries - especially if they were good-looking women - but following a couple of recent guilty verdicts, there was more at stake for Beulah and Belva.

Within this framework, Perry also delves into the stories of several other Chicago murderesses of the time, the reporters - mostly women, including Watkins - who told those stories to the public, the way things operated and the challenges faced by women at the newspapers where those reporters worked, and the unrestrained climate of Prohibition-era Chicago, where underground jazz clubs flourished and illegal liquor flowed freely. (If you ask me, Prohibition is an object lesson in irony.) He’s got great material to work with, and he crafts it into a page-turner with a firm sense of its time and place. The pace is brisk, and the writing is vivid and occasionally breathless, but Perry succeeds in putting the reader right in the midst of events, including Watkins’ application of her satirical eye to shape them into a hit, prize-winning stage comedy (the musical adaptation came years later).

The environment described in The Girls of Murder City seems to be the birthplace of the celebrity-obsessed, fame-for-its-own-sake mindset we know all too well these days, and it’s fascinating in much the same way. Despite being almost a century old, the story here has a sense of immediacy and a contemporary feel, and its blend of true crime and modern history absolutely held my attention - even without “The Cell Block Tango.”

A highly entertaining examination of murderesses in 1920's Chicago and of the culture surrounding them. In 1924 the rate of murders committed by women had risen 400% with murderesses making up 10% of the murdering population. Even more disturbing, almost all of these women got off, often despite overwhelming evidence. In order to be convicted, a murderess had to be non-white and unattractive - other than that, all bets were off.

The stories of the various women in this book, including those of Belva Gaertner and Beulah Annan, are interesting snapshots in time. From all walks of life the women portrayed primarily murdered the men in their lives, although at least one of them murdered a stranger during the commission of a burglary. In most cases alcohol was involved (because what Prohibition primarily accomplished was encouraging everyone to drink everywhere, including women) and there is often a hint of boredom right around the edges of the tale.

Perry hasn't written an incisive social history with lots of detailed analysis, but he has told a wonderful pulpy story. Great fun.

I enjoyed this look at Chicago in the early part of the last century, when the city's rival newspapers outdid themselves in terms of sensationalism. I particularly appreciated the portrait of female journalist Maurine Watkins.

The writing is ok, but sometimes redundant--the author doesn't trust the reader to remember that murder suspect Sabella Nitti was (in contrast to the other murderesses depicted in the book) unattractive and illiterate. Every time Nitti is mentioned, her unattractiveness and illiteracy are as well.

I will probably also remember this book as the first book I read on my Kobo e-reader. The e-reader edition lacked pictures and a usable index, both of which I would have really liked to see. I ended up checking the book out of the library just so I could look at the pictures.