Books by Harold Schechter and Complete Book Reviews

Harold Schechter, Author . Pocket $25 (400p) ISBN 978-0-671-04115-1
In 1844 Edgar Allan Poe and his wife, Sissy, recently moved to New York, visit P.T. Barnum's American Museum only to become enmeshed in a grisly series of murders, in this lively historical whodunit. Curiosity about a dubious display of relics...
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Harold Schechter, Author . Random $24.95 (320p) ISBN 978-0-345-44841-5
Set in 1845 Manhattan, veteran true-crime author Schechter's third competent Edgar Allan Poe mystery (after 1999's Nevermore and 2001's The Hum Bug ) again pairs the writer with a celebrity of the day, here legendary mountain man Kit...
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Harold Schechter, Author . St. Martin's $24.95 (208p) ISBN 978-0-312-28276-9
"We belong to an innately violent species," argues Schechter. Violent entertainment is popular, he says, because it's natural to indulge in "taboo fantasies" and "escape into realms of forbidden experience." Indeed, from...
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Harold Schechter, Author . Ballantine $25.95 (494p) ISBN 978-0-345-47679-1
True-crime historian Schechter (co-author, The A-Z Encyclopedia of Serial Killers ) delivers a thrilling account of a murder case that rocked Manhattan at the turn of the 20th century. Roland Molineux, a socially ambitious chemist,was a proud member
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Harold Schechter, Ballantine, $28 (400p) ISBN 978-0-345-47681-4
Noted historical true-crime expert Schechter (The Devil’s Gentleman) traces the divergent paths of the Colt brothers in a saga that falls short of the author’s usual high standards. Samuel Colt, born to a prosperous Connecticut family in 1814, was...
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Harold Schechter, Author Pocket Books $16 (320p) ISBN 978-0-671-01448-3
From serial killer expert Schechter comes a grisly, hopped-up, but surprisingly well-executed narrative of the vicious crimes and long imprisonment of Jesse Pomeroy, the notorious 19th-century ""Boston Boy Fiend."" Schechter argues that ""killer...
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Harold Schechter, Author Pocket Books $23 (336p) ISBN 978-0-671-79855-0
Young Edgar Allan Poe is the neurasthenic narrator of Schechter's period crime drama, and he recounts the legendary author's brush with real-life homicide as one of Poe's own protagonists would--with morbid, scientific rapture. A struggling...
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Harold Schechter. Ballantine, $20 trade paper (400p) ISBN 978-0-345-52447-8
Forget Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer. The ax murderers, poisoners, and generally unpleasant specimens of humanity whom Schechter (The Serial Killer Files) chronicles in this macabre collection of Americana are the ones who’ve faded from our...
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Harold Schechter. Amazon Publishing/New Harvest, $24 (384p) ISBN 978-0-544-11431-9
In Manhattan’s once-fashionable Beekman Place, the story of a young photographer’s model, known for her startling beauty in a series of lurid seminude pinups, found dead in her bathtub, stuns the big city, mired in post-depression gloom, with...
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Harold Schechter. Little A, $24.95 (334p) ISBN 978-1-4778-0895-5
Schechter (Man-Eater) recounts the horrifying murders committed by Belle Gunness, who lured approximately 28 men to their deaths on her Indiana farm in the early 20th century. Gunness advertised in national papers seeking a hired hand, and enticed...
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Harold Schechter, Author, Linda Marrow, Editor Pocket Books $22 (373p) ISBN 978-0-671-73216-5
Herman Mudgett, born in New Hampshire in 1860, purportedly achieved worldwide notoriety as the serial killer Dr. H. H. Holmes. He certainly made an impression in Chicago, where he built a ``castle'' filled with soundproof rooms, stairways that went...
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Harold Schechter. Little A, $24.95 (442p) ISBN 978-1-5420-4180-5
In this fascinating survey, Schechter (Hell’s Princess: The Mystery of Belle Gunness, Butcher of Men) details the links between more than 40 movies and the real-life crimes that inspired them. Many of Alfred Hitchcock’s films were based on real...
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Harold Schechter. Little A, $24.95 (254p) ISBN 978-1-5420-2532-4
In this gripping account, Schechter (Hell’s Princess) charts the descent of farmer Andrew Kehoe into madness. On May 18, 1927, Kehoe killed 38 children and seven adults at a school in Bath, Mich., in what has become essentially a forgotten crime. On
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Harold Schechter. Workman, $30 (288p) ISBN 978-1-5235-1529-5
True crime writer Schechter (Butcher’s Work) spotlights objects linked to acts of violence in this eccentric volume. According to Schechter, the practice of holding on to such keepsakes dates back to at least 1827, when an English hangman cut up a...
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