June Leigh is a lot like the heroine of Wait Until Dark, except it is her own hang-ups and agoraphobia that keeps her trapped in her apartment. It is also unclear whether her tormentor is flesh-and-blood or a figment of her fevered mind. Nevertheless, there is indeed plenty of danger outside her door in the…
Bugsy Siegel and John Gotti were exceptions. Most gangsters do no want publicity, especially not the Sicilian Mafia. That definitely put photo-journalist (and former member of parliament) Letizia Battaglia in a dangerous position, since she spent the better part of her career documenting the Mafia’s violent crimes. Yet, she survived to help lead the tide-changing…
Det. Jack Radcliff has a heck of a wireless package. Somehow, he can place calls to his late niece several days before her violent death. With her help, Radcliff will try to solve and prevent her murder in Jacob Estes’s Blumhouse-produced Relive, which premiered at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival. Radcliff always took a special…
There are advantages to working for a privately held company, but there is also a downside. The lack of regular shareholder disclosures allows management to conduct business with less transparency, if they so choose. That was certainly the case for Elizabeth Holmes’ notorious start-up, Theranos. Her powerful political connections helped create a perfect storm of…
Serial killers are supposed to be charming. That is how they lure in their victims. There was no better example than Ted Bundy, who was the living embodiment of sinister charm. He was so persuasive, he had his ex-girlfriend Liz Kloepfer at least half-convinced he was innocent of all the charges leveled against him. Their…
At a time when extremism seems to be on the rise on both sides of the American political spectrum, it is worth noting the arch words of Tom Wolfe: “the dark night of fascism is always descending in the United States and yet lands only in Europe.” The recent experience of Sweden arguably bears this…
Because it’s Joe Fucking Lansdale. That really should be the end of this article. If you don’t know the work of Joe R. Lansdale, Hap & Leonard is a wonderful introduction to his most popular books. If you already enjoy his work, watching the series on Sundance is like reading the books for the first…
Truman Capote’s seminal In Cold Blood is the one of the bestselling true crime novels in history (second only to Vincent Bugliosi's 1974 book Helter Skelter). Published in 1966, the book recounts the shocking murders of four members of the Herbert Clutter family in Holcomb, Kansas, in 1959. After learning of the murders, Capote traveled…
Gomorrah (Picador Press) is Roberto Saviano’s bestselling account of the Camorra’s audacious corruption of Naples and beyond in the 1990s and 2000s. In December 1991, Giuseppe (Don Peppino) Diana, the doomed parish priest of the Neapolitan suburb of Casal di Principe, published an open letter to his parishioners called “For the Love of My People…
Naples is one of the oldest continuously-occupied cities in the world, but it’s mostly known for three things: pizza (most of the pizza we eat is Neapolitan-style), Mt. Vesuvius, and being perhaps the most spectacularly corrupt city in Italy. This last is quite an accomplishment, something like being the tallest man in the NBA. As…
