Customer Reviews

Appointment for Murder

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book is a detailed story of a dentist who lived out his violent fantasies, leading him to murder innocent men. Dr. Engleman's sex life, family life, and religious beliefs are described in a way so that the reader can form an understanding of why he commited his crimes. Bacos does not give much analysis; therefore, it is more like reading a fiction novel than a nonfictious story. The dialogue from the ATF's tapes allows the reader into the mind of a power hungry Mama's boy.

This is a story about a very manipulative dentist that tried to control everyone that he knew. His specialty, of course, was using women as a major part of his schemes to get rich. If it wasn't for his ex wife, this story probably would never have been told and Engleman would still be killing innocent people. I feel that this was a very good book and that the author should be praised for being able to write in such detail about this very sick and twisted man.

Susan Crain Bakos takes a break from her how-to sex guides to detail the crimes of dentist Glennon Engleman of St. Louis, Missouri South Side fame in her 1989 book titled Appointment for Murder.

Engleman is known to have killed at least seven people for the sole purpose of collecting a portion of insurance policy payouts; with the exception of Sophie Barrera, a lab technician who had, just prior to her death, filed a civil suit against Engleman in an attempt to collect lab fees incurred by his dental practice.

The first 175 pages of this 384 page book were interesting; the remaining pages, not so much.

If you can wade through the sexual escapades of Engleman (which serve no other purpose than to turn a true crime book into a trashy dime store romance novel), there is an interesting story of a man who could kill without conscience and was able to get by with it for over two decades.

Most interestly, Engleman seemed to have some psychological hold over others, whom he involved in his murderous plots.

Can I recommend Appointment for Murder? No. If you want to know the story of Dr. Glennon Engleman, save yourself the time and energy by reading the Wikipedia article; a condensed, smut-free version of this book that tells you everything you need to know about it.

Between the years of 1958 and 1980 a St. Louis dentist, Glennon "Doc" Engleman killed (or maybe, in one instance, had killed) 7 people. Engleman practiced his dentistry on St. Louis' poor South Side and was highly thought of by his patients, many of whom charitably received reduced rates or free work. Engleman was also a highly volatile, racist, and arrogant man who actively enjoyed killing thinking it proved him mentally tougher than the common person. And if there was one thing Doc thought he was not, it was a commoner.
Engleman was unusual - in my fairly extensive true crime reading experience - in that he's the only male serial killer I have ever read about who did not kill due to some kind of sexual psychopathy. In Doc's case it was all about the power and the money. The power angle was necessary for Doc's favored modus operandi, which was all about grooming people less educated than himself, gaining their confidence, and enlisting them in his plans for murder.
What he typically did was to gain emotional control, something he was good at, of pretty but uneducated young women by offering them a better life, which included a windfall lump sum of money. Doc's plan worked like this: He would counsel his current young lady/project to marry a man - a specific kind of man. Doc, who often helped choose and always ultimately had to approve the choice of victim, insisted upon steady, reliable, anonymous men who worked for large companies and therefore had company life insurance and whose murders would not be particularly thoroughly investigated. He also counseled the young ladies as to how to get the victims to marry them by explicitly instructing them as to what the men would want sexually and how to do it. After entrapping their husbands, the new wives would then buy more life insurance on them, and after a decorous time interval, Doc would kill them and split the money.
He committed his final murder, however, of dental lab owner Sophie Barrera, because she had the temerity to have sued him for $15,000 dollars she said he owed her. Doc got his point across by using so much dynamite to blow up her car that parts of her body were found atop a nearby 6-story building, the point being that you REALLY didn't want to mess with Doc.

In her 1988 true crime work APPOINTMENT FOR MURDER, Author Susan Crain Bakos presents one of the most interesting and unusual cases I have ever read. I think any true crime fan would agree. Unfortunately Bakos' writing skill doesn't match the fascination of her subject matter, which results in a book that I wish had been written by a great true crime writer and researcher - Jack Olsen, Darcy O'Brien, and Lowell Cauffiel come to mind as examples.
There are worse true crime writers than Bakos, and the book has some positives:
1. Bakos has made an honest attempt to write a good book. Absent is the cynicism of an Aphrodite Jones or a Michael Benson
2. There is none of the common irritating idolization of law enforcement, and there is no padding and little repetition other than Bakos' vivid descriptions of Doc's sexual instructions and techniques. And there are none of the tortured similes used by too many true crime authors in an apparent attempt to say, "Look, I'm writing creatively."
3. She understands the English language and has in the areas of language use, syntax, and overall comprehensive continuity written a competent book.

But unfortunately the negatives outweigh the positives:
1. The book contains more than a little of what I can only term pornography, and Bakos enthusiastically and repeatedly describes Doc's sexual techniques with a variety of women as well as with his wife, whose prowess Bakos also describes in detail. At first I didn't consider this a negative as Bakos is quite good at writing dirty, and I had thoughts of maybe getting together with her for a drink, but the descriptions are so frequent and so predictable that I felt our relationship cooling and becoming stale - a sad reminder of what we once had - before I even met her.
2. Bakos uses a device, to both move the plot forward and to a greater extent to create a feel for Engleman's state of mind and persona, that is fairly common and which I truly dislike. She has him essentially thinking out loud in the voice she assumes he'd use. "Rosie's mouth, stretched open like a bloody gash, matched her nails. Not a bad-looking woman, he thought, but old. She smelled old. It was probably the fragrance she wore. Women dated themselves by the perfumes they wore - scents associated with other times. She looked like Lucille Ball, that old broad." This, according to Bakos, is what Engleman was thinking while he was working on Rosie's teeth. Not only does this device always have an amateur feel to me, but...
3. It also illustrates the single biggest failing of the book. It is 80% fiction. Bakos has taken a real and amazing case and, using it as a base, has made up all of the day-to-day details and conversations. There is absolutely NO way she knows most of what she writes. A few more example follow, but I could quote from almost every page to illustrate my point:

"They were both exhilarated. Engleman's breath was coming fast, as if he were running or getting into sex, getting into it good, in the middle stages of hard excitement. In the back seat the body emitted the odor of fresh kill. Blood."

And as ludicrous as it gets, Rosie, a minor character and dental patient "...had to take two buses from Engleman's office... While she waited for the first bus, she checked her watch, which said 4:40 P.M. and lamented the fact that Doc's tardiness had made it likely that most of the junk shops on Cherokee Street would be closed... She forgot about the possibility of finding an addition to her collection of flow-blue pottery, however, when she got off the bus at Grand and Gravois."
This is just ludicrous. Bakos did not interview Barb, and certainly not Engleman who until he died refused to grant interviews. And Rosie almost certainly does not even exist but is rather a character Bakos has made up to convey a sense of milieu. I mean "flow-blue pottery". Please.

I have rated APPOINTMENT FOR MURDER 3 stars because the actual case is as fascinating as you'll find anywhere, because the book doesn't drag, and because when Bakos wasn't actively irritating me with her writing, I enjoyed reading it.
But ultimately Bakos is not writing true crime, but true crime fiction/romance novel. One of my main tests for great true crime is that when I have finished a book I thoroughly enjoyed, I realize how good the writing was and also that while I was reading, I was never actively aware of the author. There was never a time while I was reading APPOINTMENT FOR MURDER that Bakos' technique was not actively hovering over the pages.

I have been reading true crime for at least 17 years now and really, it takes heck of a lot to disappoint me. But this had to be the worse book I've ever read. I finished it only because it was part of my "book club" and other readers were counting on me to finish it. Besides that I really don't like to "quit" anything, so I forced myself as painfully enduring as it was. The book club members weren't happy with it either, in fact we didn't even want to discuss it, which is the point of a book club, and that is pretty bad.

The story itself had the potential of being a great story, unfortunately it was just so incredibly boring. I'm Sorry, I can't recommend it. I bought it because it looked good and the readers reviews were pretty positive, I wonder if we all read the same book? I gave 1 star because it wouldn't let me choose no stars. I only hope my book club will allow me to choose another book.