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An American Killing
A bestselling true-crime author, wife to a Washington insider, Denise Burke knows the facts behind the rumors, the stories behind the scandals. Now Owen Hall, a charismatic congressman, urges her to investigate a triple murder case that may have led to a wrongful conviction. But as she begins to penetrate the fateful events surrounding the years-old homicide, Hall suddenly begs her to stop. Yet Burke is in too deep. The stakes reach a deadly level when Hall dies in flagrante with a D.C. call girl--and Burke uncovers a chilling connection. Desperately pursuing a story of secrets, sex, and blood--not for profit, not for fame, but for her very survival--Burke exposes the terrifying truth about the most monstrous crime of all.
352 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1998
About the author
Mary-Ann Tirone Smith
19 books30 followersI was born and raised in Hartford, Connecticut and have lived in Connecticut all my life except for the two years I served as a Peace Corps volunteer on Mt. Cameroon, an active volcano rising nearly 14,000 feet above the equatorial sea. I have a fun family and a labradoodle named Saltalamacchia, also fun. "Salty," my first dog.
My grandparents on my father's side immigrated from the north of Italy, and on my mother's, Quebec. My fondest childhood memories are of sweltering summers blue-crabbing with my French-speaking grandfather from 5 a.m. until 5 p.m., my grandfather wearing a worn three-piece suit and cap, and me, my underpants. When I told my Italian grandfather that I would be going to Cameroon as a Peace Corps volunteer he told me there were very good grapes grown in Africa.
My brother was autistic, a savant, who would not allow singing, laughing, sneezing, electronic sound (including television, radio and anything that produced music), and the flushing of the toilet except when he was asleep and he never seemed to be asleep. He had a library of over two thousand books all on WWII. As his adjutant, I attained a vast pool of knowledge on such things as identifying fighter bombers from their silhouettes and why we dropped the atomic bomb. "To win the war," Tyler told me. "But it didn't work so we dropped another one. Victory at last."
The relationship with my brother was one of three influences on my writing; the second, my father's bedtime poetry and prose following the Our Father and Hail Mary. "My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings. Look upon my works ye mighty and despair!" The third influence was the shelf of classic children's literature my mother kept stocked with such gems as The Swiss Family Robinson, Bambi, Tom the Water-Boy, Silver Pennies, King Arthur and the Round Table, The Child's Odyssey. Somehow, The Bedside Esquire (1936) found its way to the shelf and I read the extraordinary short fiction within, including Hemingway's "The Snows of Kilimanjaro," Gallico's Keeping "Cool in Conneaut," Salinger's "For "Esmé with Love and Squalor," Hecht's "Snowfall in Childhood," and my favorite, "Latins Make Lousy Lovers," by Anonymous who turned out to be Helen Lawrenson, the only woman with a piece in the collection. (Sheesh.) Also in the collection was an excerpt from the novel, Christ in Concrete, by Pietro Di Donato, which so bowled me over that I decided then and there that I would be a writer, too, just like all the writers who wrote fiction for Esquire Magazine in 1936.
After Peace Corps service, I taught, worked as a librarian and got my first freelance writing job with Reader's Digest. The Digest editor assigned me sports and games for How to Do Just about Anything, a book which sold 50 million copies world-wide. Reader's Digest made a vast fortune on that book alone, while the writers earned $25 to $75 dollars per article. I learned economy of language writing such pieces as "How to Play Tennis" in fifty words.
In 2010, I was awarded the Diana Bennett Fellowship at the Black Mountain Institute at UNLV, where I wrote my most recent novel, The Honoured Guest: Anne Alger Craven, Witness to Sumter, in Her Words.
My work has been reprinted in several foreign languages. I have taught fiction and memoir writing at many venues including the Mark Twain House in Hartford, CT, and on the Aran Islands through the University of Ireland, Galway, and online via this website.
I spend time in Fall River, MA, where I took the tour of the Lizzie Borden house. By the time the tour had ended, I knew who killed Lizzie's parents and it surely wasn't Lizzie. The competition, however, is stiff. Since I started writing this novel, another novel with an entirely different take on the crime was published. And there is a film presently in the works, again, with another take altogether. I'll keep up my work on my own version, and I'm convinced, the real one.
Right now: On Sunday afternoon, April 15, 2018, I will p
My grandparents on my father's side immigrated from the north of Italy, and on my mother's, Quebec. My fondest childhood memories are of sweltering summers blue-crabbing with my French-speaking grandfather from 5 a.m. until 5 p.m., my grandfather wearing a worn three-piece suit and cap, and me, my underpants. When I told my Italian grandfather that I would be going to Cameroon as a Peace Corps volunteer he told me there were very good grapes grown in Africa.
My brother was autistic, a savant, who would not allow singing, laughing, sneezing, electronic sound (including television, radio and anything that produced music), and the flushing of the toilet except when he was asleep and he never seemed to be asleep. He had a library of over two thousand books all on WWII. As his adjutant, I attained a vast pool of knowledge on such things as identifying fighter bombers from their silhouettes and why we dropped the atomic bomb. "To win the war," Tyler told me. "But it didn't work so we dropped another one. Victory at last."
The relationship with my brother was one of three influences on my writing; the second, my father's bedtime poetry and prose following the Our Father and Hail Mary. "My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings. Look upon my works ye mighty and despair!" The third influence was the shelf of classic children's literature my mother kept stocked with such gems as The Swiss Family Robinson, Bambi, Tom the Water-Boy, Silver Pennies, King Arthur and the Round Table, The Child's Odyssey. Somehow, The Bedside Esquire (1936) found its way to the shelf and I read the extraordinary short fiction within, including Hemingway's "The Snows of Kilimanjaro," Gallico's Keeping "Cool in Conneaut," Salinger's "For "Esmé with Love and Squalor," Hecht's "Snowfall in Childhood," and my favorite, "Latins Make Lousy Lovers," by Anonymous who turned out to be Helen Lawrenson, the only woman with a piece in the collection. (Sheesh.) Also in the collection was an excerpt from the novel, Christ in Concrete, by Pietro Di Donato, which so bowled me over that I decided then and there that I would be a writer, too, just like all the writers who wrote fiction for Esquire Magazine in 1936.
After Peace Corps service, I taught, worked as a librarian and got my first freelance writing job with Reader's Digest. The Digest editor assigned me sports and games for How to Do Just about Anything, a book which sold 50 million copies world-wide. Reader's Digest made a vast fortune on that book alone, while the writers earned $25 to $75 dollars per article. I learned economy of language writing such pieces as "How to Play Tennis" in fifty words.
In 2010, I was awarded the Diana Bennett Fellowship at the Black Mountain Institute at UNLV, where I wrote my most recent novel, The Honoured Guest: Anne Alger Craven, Witness to Sumter, in Her Words.
My work has been reprinted in several foreign languages. I have taught fiction and memoir writing at many venues including the Mark Twain House in Hartford, CT, and on the Aran Islands through the University of Ireland, Galway, and online via this website.
I spend time in Fall River, MA, where I took the tour of the Lizzie Borden house. By the time the tour had ended, I knew who killed Lizzie's parents and it surely wasn't Lizzie. The competition, however, is stiff. Since I started writing this novel, another novel with an entirely different take on the crime was published. And there is a film presently in the works, again, with another take altogether. I'll keep up my work on my own version, and I'm convinced, the real one.
Right now: On Sunday afternoon, April 15, 2018, I will p
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Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews
July 17, 2018
Ugh. It started off so well. The characters seemed interesting and the writing was okay and I was curious to know more about the powerful politician found dead in an apparently accidental case of autoerotic asphyxiation, but maybe was murdered instead. Then it all went to heck on page 18, when the first person narrator suddenly began swinging between present tense and past tense, the story became clogged with celebrity name-dropping, and it became painfully obvious that the author was drawing so heavily on the Ann Rule/Ted Bundy story that it completely kicked me out of the story. I did power through to page 50, but there’s no way I could bring myself to finish the book.
DNF on page 50. Hardcover, purchased years ago on a whim from a clearance table at a big box bookstore that has long since gone out of business.
DNF on page 50. Hardcover, purchased years ago on a whim from a clearance table at a big box bookstore that has long since gone out of business.
August 23, 2013
Very good character development, pretty good mystery. The author had some wonderful turns of phrase: she describes a blue-collar town in which women wear frumpy wool coats in springtime because they believe that between-season coats are irresponsible.
January 31, 2011
This book was intriguing in the middle, but the end completely lost me. Too much craziness and much of it didn't make sense.
August 20, 2025
Picked this up at a used book sale for probably 50 cents so I probably just glanced at it and thought it was true crime and it might have even been in the true crime section. The back cover starts with "A bestselling true crime author....but I failed to see at the top it said it was a novel. So when I started this book I was a little puzzled, thinking it was a true crime story, but it was soon apparent it was not. It is about a fictional true crime author. The story is not all that interesting and I ended up skimming to the end.
November 13, 2025
I don't really understand the negative reviews that have been posted for this. I think it's an excellent novel, intelligently written. It's not an easy read, so that might be what is putting the average crime reader off, but it is a rewarding read. It's worth it if only for the scene between Charles Hall and Denise. Just these few pages could be used as an example for a writing course. Not too sure about the Clintons being in there. Maybe it was an attempt at authenticity but I think it had the opposite effect. Great read even though you have to concentrate. I didn't want it to finish.
December 21, 2021
I found this book on sale never having heard of it or the author and I was charmed with word one. The plot kind of holds up with only a few flaws but the characters and the story just grabbed me and moved me along so I hardly noticed. Denise Burke is a true crime writer who is having an affair with a US Senator. He tells her of an intriguing murder so that she'll write a book about it. About the time she gets interested he tells her to stop.
June 24, 2019
I read "An American Killing" by Mary-Ann Tirone Smith during the weekend. Quite a trip back to the political life of the Bill Clinton presidential era, as the writer mixes real folks with the running true crime research and writing her heroine indulges in, on the fictional landscape. I think in the end Mary-Ann rather loses control, though. Engaging story and technique.
July 13, 2023
As an avid Ann Rule myself, I appreciated in particular the thinly veiled Bundy references. The writing is solid, the characters complex, and the general atmosphere rich enough to carry you through the end. The plot does, I admit, devolve into craziness towards the end there, but I'm not going to fault anyone their dramatics!
March 6, 2021
This book had a really good writing style that draws you in.. as other reviews say, it starts off strong and then car crashes into this weird mess.
Also it's worth noting that while this book may have been somewhat progressive for '98 it 100% did not age well.
Also it's worth noting that while this book may have been somewhat progressive for '98 it 100% did not age well.
January 7, 2026
Did not like the first half at all - too much of a soap opera feel, so much so that I wondered if I really should continue reading. Glad I stuck with it because the second half was engrossing (until it went back into soap opera mode for a few pages at the end.)
July 12, 2018
Fairly good book. Easy to read, enjoyed the different characters and relationships. That run alongside the main story. Its worth a read.
September 27, 2018
Had to give up after 50 pages. The main character just annoyed me, and it's told in the 1st person.
October 12, 2024
I mean going by the title alone it doesn't surprise me that i hated this but it was somehow much worse than I thought
November 12, 2008
I found this book in the trunk of a rental car. It's a late 20th century noir/true crime/potboiler/political soap opera.
Ted Bundy seems to be the prototype for one of the minor characters; William Jefferson Clinton also makes a cameo appearance, as does the prototype for Buddy the "First Dog."
Style: Really good. (3-1/2 stars)
Characters and Quirks: Superbly quirky. (4-1/2 stars)
Storyline: Unbelievably suspensful, yet unbelievable in general. The plot twists have more torque than a cyclone (1 star).
This is exactly what I'd want in a vacation read. I'll see if I can find more of her work lying around.
Ted Bundy seems to be the prototype for one of the minor characters; William Jefferson Clinton also makes a cameo appearance, as does the prototype for Buddy the "First Dog."
Style: Really good. (3-1/2 stars)
Characters and Quirks: Superbly quirky. (4-1/2 stars)
Storyline: Unbelievably suspensful, yet unbelievable in general. The plot twists have more torque than a cyclone (1 star).
This is exactly what I'd want in a vacation read. I'll see if I can find more of her work lying around.
September 16, 2009
One of my favorite author's (loved Girls of Tender Age: A Memoir)earlier books. Took about half-way through the book before I got really into the story and then I couldn't wait to find out what happened.
November 7, 2014
I really enjoyed how the plot unfolded through the process of research for a book. I was pleased with the first 75% of the book, but then it got excessive. Too much adultery for me and too much killing - it felt over the top and unrelatable.
April 27, 2007
Awful plotting with incest etc. that is unbelievable.
May 15, 2007
slow read
September 16, 2009
I really like Tirone-Smith. I enjoyed her memoir and this mystery had some twists that I didn't see coming at the end.
December 20, 2010
Okay, but tiresome
March 31, 2013
This is the first book by this author I have read. I found the story interesting with a few unexpected surprises.
July 18, 2013
Good book. Didn't read all that quickly, but when I thought I had figured it out, then I hadn't so I liked being a bit surprised.
April 6, 2016
Dense and layered and interesting mystery that includes elements of family , relationships, race, politics and crime but all with lots of humanity.
Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews