Customer Reviews

Murderess!

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I enjoy true crime books, and this one is fairly typical in the handling of the case: first they tell you what allegedly happened, then they tell you the story leading up to the murder, and then the trial, and finally the death sentences. Since it's a true story, there's no point in "making you wait" for what you know happens in the end: it says right on the cover that the woman and her accomplice were put to death for murdering the woman's husband. So, no mystery there. The only reason for reading the book is to get the full story, which is fairly interesting, but not terribly fascinating or exciting. The MOST interesting thing, ultimately, for me, is the fact that this incident was the basis for the movies Double Indemnity and The Postman Always Rings Twice. So -- that's why I read it.

While the events which prompted this book are fascinating, the author didn't seem to have the ability to maintain the reader's interest throughout. I could have quit reading after the first 50 pages, skipped the long and tedious middle, and then read the last 20 or so pages and still have gotten the salient points of the story. Instead, I kept plodding along throughout the middle, expecting to read something new to no avail. The author (mistakenly, I think) spilled the whole story at the beginning and just kept repeating the same themes over and over in the middle. In this way it was unsatisfying. However, the portrayals of the two murderers was good, plus the way she took the reader back to the '20s with references to sayings and customs of that particular period.

Murderess! is the first book about the Ruth Snyder-Judd Gray case, a classic murder from the 1920s that has been wrongly forgotten. I had read about this case in other true crime anthologies, but no one had expanded it to book-length until now. Ruth Snyder (the murder victim was her husband, Albert, killed in 1927) and Judd Gray are a classic example of two people who came together with literally disastrous consequenses. She was a bored housewife and he was a traveling sales rep for a corset company. They met in a restaurant and began an affair that was intense, passionate, and, for her husband, deadly. The New York City press had a field day with this case, dubbing them "The Granite Woman and Her Putty Man." That seems mostly accurate, although even after reading and re-reading this book I cannot apportion blame for the murder or even state whose idea it was originally. This is not the author's fault; these two people were very intertwined and during their affair it's hard to determine where one ended and the other began. They each tried to shift all of the blame onto the other at trial, of course(it didn't work). The press, especially the New York City papers, play a large role in this book, because most of the information is taken from press accounts. I can't really fault the author for this, as the case is so old, and he states that the New York Times published the entire trial transcript! Both Snyder and Gray, their lawyers, and their families played to the media, and this information is very interesting and seems very current. Overall, a superior first true-crime book and well worth reading. Incidentally, this case was the inspiration for James M. Cain's classic crime novels Double Indemnity and The Postman Always Rings Twice. I hope Mr. Margolin writes more true crime!

This is a must read book for all true crime novel enthusiasts. The time is the 1920's and it proves that there is "nothing new under the sun". Lust, greed, and murder for money has been around for a long time. The only difference is: These people were executed quickly.