A Treasury of Murder Set (Famous Players, The Lindbergh Child & The Case of Madeleine Smith)


By Rick Geary (NBM/ComicsLit)
ISBN: 978-1-56163-730-0

Master cartoonist Rick Geary is a unique presence in both comics and true crime literature. His compelling dissections of some of the most infamous and groundbreaking murder mysteries since policing began – as graphic novel reconstructions – never fail to darkly beguile or entertain, and now, with Christmas (always a time of drawn knives and frayed tempers) fast approaching, three of his very best have been re-released in an economical set that will delight fans of the genre and certainly make new converts out of dubious scoffers…

Combining a superlative talent for laconic prose, incisive observation and detailed pictorial extrapolation with his fascination for the darker aspects of human history, Geary’s forensic eye scoured the last hundred years or so for his ongoing Treasury of XXth Century Murder series, and this second volume here re-examined a landmark homicide that changed early Hollywood and led in large part to the punishing self-censorship of the Hays Commission Production Code.

Famous Players: The Mysterious Death of William Desmond Taylor opens in 1911 when the first moving picture studio set up in the sunny orange groves of rural Hollywood. Within a decade the wasteland was a burgeoning boomtown of production companies and back lots, where newly beatified movie stars were earning vast sums of money.

As usual in such situations the new industrial community swiftly accumulated a ubiquitous underbelly, becoming a hotbed of vice, excess and debauchery.

William Desmond Taylor was a man with a clouded past and a huge reputation as a movie director and ladies man. On the morning of Thursday February 2nd, 1922 he was found dead in his palatial home by his valet, thus initiating one of the most celebrated (still unsolved) murder cases in Los Angeles’ extremely chequered history.

Uncovering a background of drugs, sex, booze, celebrity and even false identity, this crime was the template for every tale of “Hollywood Babylon” and, even more than the notorious and tragic Fatty Arbuckle sex scandal, drove the movers and shakers of Tinsel-Town to clean up their act – or at least to keep it fully concealed from the prudish, hypocritical public gaze.

Geary is meticulous and logical as he dissects the crime, examines the suspects – major and minor – and dutifully pursues all the players to their recorded ends. Especially intriguing are snippets of historical minutiae and beautifully rendered maps and plans which bring all the varied locations to life (the author should seriously consider turning this book into a Cluedo special edition) and gives us all a fair crack at solving this glamorous cold case…

 

The first volume in the series was every bit as compelling: a brilliant example of how graphic narrative can be so much more than simple fantasy and entertainment.

The Lindbergh Child: America’s Hero and the Crime of the Century reveals how, after crossing the Atlantic in the monoplane Spirit of St. Louis in May 1927, Charles Lindbergh became the most famous man in the world.

Six years later his son Charles Augustus Lindbergh Jr. was kidnapped from the family home at Hopewell, New Jersey. The boy disappeared on the night of February 29th 1932.

An intense, increasingly hysterical search went on for months as many bogus kidnappers, chancers, grifters and venal intermediaries tried to cash in. The toddler’s decomposed body was eventually discovered in desolate woodlands on Thursday 12th May. The 3-year-old had been dead for months, possibly even killed on the night he was taken…

What followed was one of the most appalling catalogues of police misconduct, legal malfeasance and sordid exploitation (from conmen trying to profit from tragedy) in history as, over the next few years, one suspect was caught, convicted and executed in such slapdash fashion that as late as 1981 and 1986 the conviction was appealed. A large number of individuals have claimed over the decades to actually be the real Lindbergh heir…

 

Before combining his unique talents for laconic prose, incisive observation and detailed cartooning with an obvious passion for the darker side of modern history, Geary had previously exercised his forensic eye in the gripping Treasury of Victorian Murder sequence.

From that series of graphic inquiries the eighth volume The Case of Madeleine Smith focused on the true and scandalous secret affair between Emile L’Anglier, a low-born French clerk and prim, proper and eminently respectable Miss Madeleine Smith, daughter of a wealthy Scottish merchant.

The slow poisoning of the Gallic Romeo led to a notorious trial in the 19th century and the eventual verdict shocked everyone and satisfied nobody….

The author is a unique talent in the comic industry not simply because of his manner of drawing but because of his subject matter and methodology in telling tales. Geary always presents both facts and the theories – both contemporary and modern – with chilling graphic precision, captivating clarity and devastating dry wit, examining criminology’s greatest unsolved mysteries with a force and power that Oliver Stone would envy.

These compelling cases are a perfect example of how graphic narrative can be so much more than simple fantasy entertainment, and all such merrily morbid murder masterpieces should be mandatory reading for every mystery addict and crime collector.

Seductive storytelling, erudite argument and audacious drawing give these tales an irresistible dash and verve which makes for unforgettable reading.

© 2006, 2008, 2009, 2013 Rick Geary. All Rights Reserved.