Murder on Several Occasions by Jonathan Goodman N.D

True Crime History

by Jonathan Goodman

In this grisly and gripping collection of essays - some revised and updated, some never before published, but all new to American audiences - prize-winning English crime historian Jonathan Goodman turns his attention to a variety of British and American crimes from the 1820s to the 1980s, some high profile and others not. With the author as detective, each of Goodman's essays examines a particularly notorious murder and subsequent trial. He introduces the readers to the 1923 shooting at the Savoy Hotel in London of Prince Ali Kamel Fahmy Bey at the hands of his wife, Madame Marie-Marguerite Fahmy; he revisits the "Crime of the Century," the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby in March 1932 allegedly by Bruno Richard Hauptmann, and his subsequent execution for this crime, even though this case against Hauptmann has come under scrutiny; and he explores the 1980 serial killings committed by Michele de Marco Lupo, a gay man who coaxed other homosexuals to meet with him, then strangled and savagely bit them. Goodman's careful research, "forensic" work, and fascinating subject matter, together with his lively and engaging prose and fascinating subject matter, make these tales of murder a valuable addition to the field of true crime history.

Genres: True Crime, Nonfiction

Paperback

First published June 30, 2007

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Jonathan Goodman was one of Britain's leading historian of crime. The American critic and historian Jacques Barzun described him as "the greatest living master of the true-crime literature", and Julian Symons, another big name in true-crime, thought of him as "the premier investigator of crime past".

His career as a full-time writer began in the 1970s when he edited the Celebrated Trials series which itself was a successor to Notable British Trials. Then in the 1980s, he worked on numerous anthologies, such as The Railway Murders (1984) and The Seaside Murders (1985), often persuading his many friends to provide a chapter and then writing a short introduction. He also continued to research old murder cases, writing books on the Newcastle upon Tyne murder of Evelyn Foster, the New York locked-room mystery of card-playing womaniser Joseph Elwell and, in 1990, The Passing of Starr Faithfull, the daughter of a Manhattan society couple whose body was washed up on Long Beach, New York, in 1931, for which he received the Crime Writers' Association's gold dagger for non-fiction.

He is most well known for uncovering a solution to Britain's most baffling real-life whodunnit, the murder of Julia Wallace in Liverpool in 1931; he not only exonerated the dead woman's husband but identified and traced the man he believed to be the real murderer. This was documented in The Killing of Julia Wallace (1969).

Reviews

[Katherine Addison · Rating 4 out of 5]

Goodman is too précieux for my taste, which, given that I am someone who will use précieux in a sentence, probably tells you about as much as you need to know. He seems to be modeling himself at least somewhat on William Roughead but--at an even further remove from the Victorian/Edwardian writers that Roughead was modeling himself on, and with a kind of archness that I found deeply off-putting--the style simply gets in the way. The more modern the crime, in particular, the more jarring the elaborate flourishes of the prose became. There may have been a deliberate intention to create an alienation effect, but if so, I found it to be a poor choice and in somewhat dubious taste.

(I've blogged about my aversion-compulsion relationship with true crime as a genre so for now let's just say that I was rubbed the wrong way by Goodman's air of handing round the popcorn.)

I thought that was going to be all I had to say about Goodman, but then I hit his essay, "Doubts about Hauptmann," in which he forgets to be arch because he is consumed with venomous fury toward Sir Ludovic Kennedy and his book The Airman and the Carpenter The Lindbergh Kidnapping and the Framing of Richard Hauptman. Murder on Several Occasions was worth buying for that essay alone, because when he's mad enough to spit nails, Goodman is an excellent writer, clear and vicious and compelling. That essay was worth the irritation of some of the other essays in the book.

The essay on George Smith (he, as Dorothy Sayers says, of brides-in-the-bath fame), "Also Known as Love," was also very good, and although I disliked Goodman's essay on Burke and Hare, mostly because he was defending Robert Knox, but without any evidence that Knox ought to be defended (if Knox didn't know for a fact that his dissection subjects were murder victims, he certainly had enough evidence that he should have been asking some very pointed questions; one possibility is marginally less culpable than the other, but only marginally), the postscript about Bishop, Williams, and May, who tried the same get-rich-quick scheme in London in 1831, made up for it.

Three stars overall, with that fourth star for "Doubts about Hauptmann."

[Jenni V. · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really tried but couldn't get into this read. I bought it from a little bookstore/cafe downtown and will be donating it immediately. Maybe a different reader will enjoy it but I was bored and any interest the varied cases might have brought were bogged down by too many words and extra details.

One thing I did find interesting: using feet as a clue in a 1930s body identification. Her feet were unblemished with no corns and well-trimmed nails, leading them to believe she had some money because they assumed she wore shoes that fit well and could visit a chiropodist regularly.

Find all my reviews at: https://readingatrandom.blogspot.com

[Walt · Rating 3 out of 5]

I would rate it higher except for the incredibly long sentence style of Mr Goodman - reminds one of 18th century british volumes. This is a post-mortem analysis (no pun intended) of a dozen murders, some of them very famous. Includes an excellent chapter on the Lindbergh kidnapping case.

[Jessi · Rating 3 out of 5]

A collection of true-life murder stories, this book is okay. Most of the stories are well-known and have been thoroughly covered by other sources: the Lindbergh Baby, Hare and Burns, etc. Started off well when I didn't know the stories but eventually got a little boring.