A favorite author of mine, as always has written a riveting story of mystery, discovery, with a bit of society gossip. ( )

De pronto cuando te vas acercando al final se convierte en un bestseller, pero aún así fue muy entretenida. ( )

When young Harrison Burns becomes an accessory to a crime of passion committed by his friend and prep school classmate Constant Bradley, his silence is bought by patriarch Gerald. 'My soul was lost, but my future was bought and paid for'.

In 1975, 15-year-old Martha Moxley, who lived in a wealthy area of Greenwich, Conn., was found beaten to death with a golf club. The prime suspect was the 17-year-old neighbour, Thomas Skakel, a nephew of Ethel Kennedy. "A Season in Purgatory" was designed to parallel the Moxley murder case. There is a theme of power and privilege - as well as the theme that those with the most expensive lawyers win.

"A Season in Purgatory" blends in all the familiar tales of Kennedy damage and damage control. Constant Bradley's classy, beautiful wife, Charlotte, is given a million dollars by his father when she threatens to leave him because of his womanizing. A mentally challenged sister is packed off to an insane asylum and never mentioned. People are paid to write school essays and an autobiography for Constant, and his father buys up copies of the book to make sure it is a best seller. The oldest brother, Jerry, who is really supposed to be the great family political hope, has an accident, and the woman with him ends up in a wheelchair. A sister becomes an alcoholic. Gerald Bradley has a stroke.

Dominick Dunne (disclosure: he is one of my favourite authors - I subscribed to Vanity Fair for years just so I could read his column) has taken all the most chilling character flaws of generations of Kennedy's and compressed them into one creepy plot line (which happens to be closer to true than not) - a highly readable tale about the privileged who feel they can make their own rules. ( )

Los Bradley, una rica y poderosa familia norteamericana de origen irlandés, saben cómo silenciar cualquier escándalo que pueda salpicar su reputación. Su implacable patriarca, Gerald Bradley, está empeñado en que su hijo predilecto, Constant, llegue un día a ser presidente de los Estados Unidos.
Una noche de verano, después de un baile en el club de campo, una joven es asesinada y Constant se convierte en el principal sospechoso del crimen. Veintidós años más tarde, el famoso escritor Harrison Burns, antiguo compañero de colegio de Constant y viejo amigo de la familia, está decidido a confesar lo que sabe. ¿Saldrá la verdad finalmente a la luz?
Una temporada en el purgatorio es una novela trepidante sobre la capacidad de influencia de las clases privilegiadas, cuyo control sobre los distintos resortes del poder les permite moldear la verdad a su antojo. Su publicación en 1993 consagró a Dominick Dunne como el gran cronista de los secretos más oscuros de la alta sociedad norteamericana.

(Ethel Skakel Kennedy) - fictitious murder in rich Cath. family — covered up for years — good

They were the family with everything. Money. Influence. Glamour. Power. The power to halt a police investigation in its tracks. The power to spin a story, concoct a lie, and believe it was the truth. The power to murder without guilt, without shame, and without ever paying the price. America's royalty, they called the Bradleys. But an outsider refuses to play his part. And now, the day of reckoning has arrived. . . .