5662. Satan/s Circus Murder, Vice, Police Corruption, and New York's Trial of the Century, by Mike Dash (read 10 Dec 2019) This is a well-researched book, published first in 2006, which examines the murder of Herman Rosenthal on July 16, 1912 shortly after midnight in front of a New York hotel. There were many witnesses who saw a car with four armed men gun Rosenthal down. Charlie Becker was not there but was charged with hiring the four shooters to kill Rosenthal. The book examines all the information the author found in regard to the murder and the two trials of Becker, a police lieutenant. The first part of the book drags and tells more than is interesting in regard to crime in New York City. But the account of the crime itself and the of trials of Becker is full of interest. New York's highest court reversed the conviction obtained in the first trial, and rightly so. (I was surprised the book does not even give the citations to the court's opinions, which would seem to be a piece of information which obviously should be shown,). ( )

Satan’s Circus: Murder, Vice, Police Corruption, and New York’s Trial of the Century by Mike Dash
449 pages

★★ ½

The subtitle of this book is pretty explanatory as to what this book is about – corruption and murder. More so, it is the story about a police officer in the early 1900s by the name of Charley Becker. He would become, to date, the only officer to ever be executed for his crimes. The topic sounds interesting and it had potential.

Writing a history book is such a fine line. Don’t do your research and give a book with half-formed ideas and no detail? That’s bad. But it can also go the other way. Give too much detail, things that don’t really matter, just to show you did your research? That’s pretty annoying. And unfortunately this author packed way too much into this book, making it pretty darn boring. The detail was overwhelming and names were dropped like crazy – this book could have easily been better if even it had been cut by 75 pages or so.

There definitely was some interesting tidbits in this story and once it got to the meat of the story (which took until page 200 to do) it went smoothly but it occurred a bit too late to save this book and me giving it a higher rating. The author worked hard at his research, that much is obvious, but he would have done better to tone that down a bit. Not memorable.
( )

"Books to Write By" by Stuart Mayne

One of the most difficult elements of writing is finding and maintaining voice. A character has to sound the same, and dialogue has to remain of a constant timbre, throughout a story or novel. It may sound like an easy thing to do, but you'd be surprised the amount of stories I read that just don't carry it off. Depending on the character, I sometimes suggest an author read another character in fiction. But by far, my preferred option is to lead a writer to read the words/voice of a real person. This can be done by biography or autobiography, though this is not ideal as both are semi-fictionalised forms of voice. The ideal option is to read diaries, or other first hand accounts of events.

Satan's Circus is happily a little of both, a history/biography of the first American police officer to be tried and executed for murder. Dash makes excellent use of court documents and newspaper reports to directly quote Charley Becker and those associated with him. The reader has an excellent idea of the character of Becker directly from his own words. What more could you want, other than to meet the man?

No good guys. ( )