Get the Summary of Harry N. MacLean's Starkweather in 20 minutes. Please note: This is a summary & not the original book. "Starkweather" by Harry N. MacLean explores the life and crimes of Charles Starkweather, a notorious killer from Lincoln, Nebraska. Born in 1938, Starkweather was bullied as a child, leading to a deep-seated rage. His relationship with Caril Ann Fugate, marked by their intense bond and her troubled background, set the stage for their violent journey. Starkweather's fascination with firearms and violent fantasies, coupled with Caril's compliance, culminated in a murder spree that shocked the peaceful community of Lincoln...
In his classic works of true crime, Harry MacLean examined the dark side of America and its fascination with violence. In The Joy of Killing, he builds upon this expert knowledge to create a page–turning literary thriller — an exciting combination of love story, mystery, psychological suspense, and meditation on human nature and the origins of violence. This fever dream begins on a stormy fall night at a lake house in the north woods of Minnesota, where we are introduced to a college professor who a few years earlier had written a novel in which he justified a gruesome campus murder under the nihilistic theory that there is no right or wrong, no moral center to man's activity. The writer returns to the lake house where he had spent his childhood summers and locks himself in the attic, intent on writing the final story of his life. Playing on a continuous loop in his mind are key moments in his past: his childhood in small–town Iowa, where he and his best friend befriended a local drifter; his childhood on the lake where one summer a local boy drowned in a storm; and the central fixation of his erotic meeting with a girl on a train bound for Chicago when he was just fifteen. All of these threads weave together as the writer tries to piece together the multitude of secrets and acts of violence that make up one human life. Reminiscent of the work of noir master Derek Raymond and John Banville's The Sea with a touch of David Lynch, The Joy of Killing, with its haunting language and vivid images, is both a fascinating look into the fugue state of one man's mind as well as a searing, philosophical look at violence and its impact on our human condition. With its elegant structure, multiple storylines, and edge–of–your–seat suspense, the novel is the tour–de–force fiction debut by one of America's premier writers of true crime.
The Caril Fugate story is to be released as a four-part SHOWTIME docuseries on February 17. The documentary is based on the Addicus Books title, The Twelfth Victim—The Innocence of Caril Fugate in the Charles Starkweather Murder Rampage. The series will premiere on Friday, February 17 at 8 p.m. ET/PT, with new episodes airing weekly on Fridays at 7 p.m. CST, 8 p.m. EST on SHOWTIME. All four episodes will also be released on demand and on streaming platforms for SHOWTIME subscribers on February 17. In 1958, nineteen-year-old Charles Starkweather gained notoriety as one of the nation's first spree killers. He murdered eleven people in Nebraska and one in Wyoming. After a week on the run, he was arrested, later convicted, and sentenced to die in the electric chair. Starkweather's girlfriend, Caril Fugate, fourteen, was with him throughout the murder spree. Was she his hostage or a participant? This question still stirs debate more than sixty years later. Fugate claims she was too terrified to attempt escape—Starkweather had told her he would have her family killed if she disobeyed him. Unbeknownst to her, he had already murdered them. A jury found Fugate guilty of first-degree murder.
#1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER A shocking exposé of the deadliest killing spree in Canadian history, and how police tragically failed its victims and survivors. As news broke of a killer rampaging across the tiny community of Portapique, Nova Scotia, late on April 18, 2020, details were oddly hard to come by. Who was the killer? Why was he not apprehended? What were police doing? How many were dead? And why was the gunman still on the loose the next morning and killing again? The RCMP was largely silent then, and continued to obscure the actions of denturist Gabriel Wortman after an officer shot and killed him at a gas station during a chance encounter. Though retired as an investigative journalist and author, Paul Palango spent much of his career reporting on Canada’s troubled national police force. Watching the RCMP stumble through the Portapique massacre, only a few hours from his Nova Scotia home, Palango knew the story behind the headlines was more complicated and damning than anyone was willing to admit. With the COVID-19 lockdown sealing off the Maritimes, no journalist in the province knew the RCMP better than Palango did. Within a month, he was back in print and on the radio, peeling away the layers of this murderous episode as only he could, and unearthing the collision of failure and malfeasance that cost a quiet community 22 innocent lives.
Verteran investigative journalist Stevie Cameron first began following the story of missing women in 1998, when the odd newspaper piece appeared chronicling the disappearances of drug-addicted sex trade workers from Vancouver's notorious Downtown Eastside. It was not until February 2002 that pig farmer Robert William Pickton would be arrested, and 2008 before he was found guilty, on six counts of second-degree murder. These counts were appealed and in 2010, the Supreme Court of Canada rendered its conclusion. The guilty verdict was upheld, and finally this unprecedented tale of true crime could be told. Covering the case of one of North America's most prolific serial killers gave Stevie Cameron access not only to the story as it unfolded over many years in two British Columbia courthouses, but also to information unknown to the police - and not in the transcripts of their interviews with Pickton - such as from Pickton's long-time best friend, Lisa Yelds, and from several women who survived terrifying encounters with him. Cameron uncovers what was behind law enforcement's refusal to believe that a serial killer was at work.
In 1989, Eileen Franklin, a young California housewife, claimed to recover a repressed memory of her father killing her playmate 20 earlier. In a landmark trial, the father was charged and convicted of first-degree murder, based solely on his daughter's testimony. This book chronicles the trial, explores the remarkably dysfunctional Franklin family, and delves into the reliability of repressed memory as evidence in court. This version contains a 2011 Epilogue, which details the reasons for the reversal of George Franklin's conviction and the refusal of the district attorney to retry him for murder.
