Monday, April 09, 2018

What is Harold Schechter reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Harold Schechter, author of Hell's Princess: The Mystery of Belle Gunness, Butcher of Men.

His entry begins:
I’m currently working on a book about fictional movies inspired by true crimes. Since many of those movies are adaptations of novels, I’m mostly reading those novels, as well as any non-fiction books dealing with the actual cases. For example, I recently finished an entry on Richard Brooks’ film version of Looking for Mr. Goodbar, which necessitated my (re)reading Judith Rossner’s 1975 bestseller along with Lacey Fosburgh’s Closing Time: The True Story of the “Goodbar” Murder. Before...[read on]
About Hell's Princess, from the publisher:
In the pantheon of serial killers, Belle Gunness stands alone. She was the rarest of female psychopaths, a woman who engaged in wholesale slaughter, partly out of greed but mostly for the sheer joy of it. Between 1902 and 1908, she lured a succession of unsuspecting victims to her Indiana “murder farm.” Some were hired hands. Others were well-to-do bachelors. All of them vanished without a trace. When their bodies were dug up, they hadn’t merely been poisoned, like victims of other female killers. They’d been butchered.

Hell’s Princess is a riveting account of one of the most sensational killing sprees in the annals of American crime: the shocking series of murders committed by the woman who came to be known as Lady Bluebeard. The only definitive book on this notorious case and the first to reveal previously unknown information about its subject, Harold Schechter’s gripping, suspenseful narrative has all the elements of a classic mystery—and all the gruesome twists of a nightmare.
Visit Harold Schechter's website.

The Page 99 Test: Killer Colt.

The Page 99 Test: Hell's Princess.

My Book, The Movie: Hell's Princess.

Writers Read: Harold Schechter.

--Marshal Zeringue