Customer Reviews

Return to the Scene of the Crime: A Guide to Infamous Places in Chicago

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I enjoyed the book, but I found errors that make me suspect about the rest of the book I wasn't familiar with. The author lists, at various places, three different dates for the murder of Deanie O'Banion: November 1st, (P. 158), November 9th (P.95), and November 10th (P. 101). November 10th, of course, is correct. The author also states on P. 102 that Mike Genna was the one who shot O'Banion. I'm not sure on this myself, but most sources I've read state that Frankie Yale was brought in from New York and did the shooting. Finally, the author states that Richard Speck never admitted to killing the eight student nurses in 1966, but on the televised program on Investigative Reports, a reporter asked Speck if he had killed the nurses and why, Speck said he did and "it just wasn't their night." I enjoyed the book, but the irritating mistakes made me wonder about the accuracy about the rest of the book.

As an attorney and a journalist, I tend to be both critical and somewhat cynical, so please forgive me if I'm a bit harsh in this comment on "Return to the Scene of the Crime." When I find blatant errors in a book, it frankly sours me on the whole book. So while I found this book entertaining, I wouldn't recommend it. Error #1 was in the chapter on Richard Speck, convicted of killing eight student nurses. Lindberg says Speck never admitted guilt, but he did exactly that in an interview on the TV program "Investigative Reports." Error #2 was in one of the chapters on William Heirens, convicted of killing a girl and two women in the 1940s. Lindberg says police found personal items belonging to the women at Heirens' residence at the University of Chicago and calls it "compelling" evidence. There is simply no basis for this statement. Dolores Kennedy's definitive book on Heirens, "William Heirens: His Day in Court," makes it clear that while police found items belonging to burglary victims, they never found anything belonging to the murder victims. The newspapers even ran interviews with the victims' families confirming this. It's an important point, considering that Heirens' lawyers, 53 years after his arrest, are continuing to seek his release on the grounds that he is innocent.

The fact that the cable documentary channels borrow heavily from the content of this book, and that the author is constantly showing up on Discovery, the Travel Channel and A & E talking about Windy City bad guys like Dillinger, Capone, et. al., says a lot about the quality of the writing and the public fascination with the subject matter. Return to the Scene is loaded with lot's of good stuff. It has a "film noir," shadows and night look and feel to it. But that's Chicago. And I highly recommend this book.

I can't believe the above nit-picking.....I'm sure this was not writen as a textbook. It is an exceptionally entertaining history of past crime scenes in and around Chicago. As an "old and retired" Chicago Police Department "work'n street dick" it brought back many memories. Especially the cases I was, personally, involved with. I've read most of Linberg's books about Chicago and thoroughly enjoyed each and every one.....his wit is precious. When I think of the thousands of hours of research that were put in........the endless pages of old newspapers that were turned and read, to get this material together.........I say , thanks Richard for a job well done.

Return to the Scene of the Crime is chock full of interesting information and written in high gun-slingin style, but as a walking tour book it's a mess. If you're willing to go through the book with a pair of scissors, a marker, and tape it might work. The crime scenes are not arranged chronologically, geographically or by subject but seemingly at random. Most walking guide books arrange the subject matter geographically and will try to put stories together into a narrative, because presumably you are going to trudge around with this book in your hands. It would be nice to recreate the scene in your mind as you walk through the neighborhoods, trying to imagine what it was like "way back when." But this book doesn't allow that. It sends you here and there, from Dillinger to Al Capone and then throws in totally unrelated crimes. And be prepared for sore feet. For instance, In the downtown tour you start on the northern edge of the loop, are instructed to walk to the southern edge of the loop for an unrelated second crime scene and then you're sent to the western outer limits of the loop for yet a third scene. Once you get there, if you haven't looked ahead, you'll find that you've just walked right past most of the other 30 scenes on the tour. After the first three scenes you will probably want to go home and sleep the rest of the day. We tried to do the north shore tour by car (walking would have been impossible because it is too dispersed) and found ourselves constantly doubling back on ourselves and jumping back and forth between decades and stories. The frustrating part was that the tour could easily have been a great one, and an atmosphere created for each particular neighborhood (gangsters on the gold coast, for example) but these larger themes were lost because of the poor organization both in terms of subject and geography. Even the little details are maddening. Every chapter starts with a map with numbers designating the crime scenes and a correspondingly numbered one-sentance description of the scene on the next page. However, the longer stories that follow are not numbered so if you lose your place (which you inevitably do) you wind up standing on the corner, or in the car, thumbing through the pages looking for the next scene's location. what a pain!! What a pity - there's a lot there, but you have to be willing to re-edit the book yourself to make any use of it either as a tour guide or as an historical narrative.

As a former Chicagoan who finds the history of the city fascinating, I appreciate the intent of this book. Tho I realize that histories of the city are written for a broad based audience, I am nevertheless frustrated when historical scenes are described without reference to specific locations / addresses, which of course would be meaningless to most readers who are not also residents. This book fills a void in that it attempts to be specific as to locations, in the way that the Dominic Pacyga / Ellen Skerrett book "Chicago City of Neighborhoods: Histories and Tours" accomplishes as a more general (and more accurate) historical guide. While "Return To The Scene" serves as a crude and basic guide, there are numerous errors which make the book virtually useless to anyone not familiar with the city. For example, Damen Avenue and Winchester Avenue are listed as an intersection when they are in fact parallel streets; in at least a dozen instances addresses on South Austin Blvd. in Cicero are given as West Austin; the Great Lakes Naval Training Center is located by the book in Glenview, IL. Ironically, in the bibliography, the author criticizes the book "Mr. Capone" as written by "two out-of-town authors whose unfamiliarity with Chicago neighborhoods is painfully evident". This book is of value only as a supplement to provide an historical context to a hopefully more accurate geographical guide to Chicago.

It was a very interesting book, explaining what happened at the sight and then what is there now. It would have been nice to have more pictures for people who would not be able to tour the city. One big disapointment was that the picture on the front cover was never identified anywhere in the book.

Richard Lindberg knows his way around Chicago, having become something of an expert in its lore, particularly in the areas of sports and crime scenes. Return to the Scene of the Crime is supposedly a factual account of some of Chicago's most notorious crimes and it is an interesting journey around town. But I question how many of the "facts" are truly factual? As biographer of William Heirens, to whom Lindberg devotes two chapters, I found damaging statements which were blatantly untrue. I am not an expert in the other numerous crimes with which he deals, but based on his treatment of Heirens, he is suspect.

Author Richard Lindberg has compiled a considerable list of some of our city's most gruesome crimes. Within these pages you will find gangster hits, murders, police corruption, even the White Sox throwing the 1919 World Series. Each crime is detailed in a brief (usually 1-3 pages) vignette, together with directions to the former scene of the crime (sometimes the building landscape has changed) for those with sufficiently morbid curiousity. I confess to having enjoyed reading some of these horrid vignettes, and coming away better informed. Among the most tragically memorable events covered in this book are the Leopold and Loeb kidnapping/murder of Bobby Franks (it became the OJ-like media-trial of the 1920's), the Richard Speck stranglings of student nurses, and the murder chamber of Dr. Holmes near the 1893 World's Fair. Sheesh. I guess this book shows why our city has such a lawless reputation around the globe - much of it stemming from the Al Capone/Gangster era in the 1920's. I wish the author had employed competent fact checking to avoid several distracting errors in the text. Still, this is an entertaining read for those who don't mind gruesome tales.

Let me first say that I hate "true crime" books.

I have never read "Helter Skelter." I do not possess any books on the Brown's Chicken and Pasta murders. I watched the infamous Geraldo Rivera "Al Capone's Vaults" special in 1987, but that was for a class assignment. Honest.

That having been said, this book is a fascinating read. Having lived in Chicago for eight years total, many of the events recounted in "Return to the Scene of the Crime" were merely hints, off-handedly dropped by natives in conversation. Unpleasant topics, deliberately skirted, best avoided.

However lurid, however horrifying, however infamous, Speck, Gacy, the Lexington Hotel, the Summerdale police scandal--these are all indelible parts of our town's history, and Lindberg writes of them with the sort of expertise that can only be gained from intimate familiarity, some from word of mouth, some from the papers, some from dusty files in ancient cabinets. The author's documentary sources have largely been in the care and custody of the Chicago Crime Commission since the events originally occurred, and it's hard to imagine a more authoritative repository for this information. As a survey work, you'd be hard-pressed to find better.

If there is a problem with the book, it is that a number of the maps cite incorrect locations for certain addresses provided in the text. I recall about half a dozen or so spots which were anywhere from a couple of blocks to a half-mile distant from the actual location referenced. In case of conflict, go with the text. If you're really touring these locations, though, Chicago's grid system was designed to make navigation easy, and I wish you the best of luck.

I was occasionally jarred by Lindberg's insertion of political commentary into what I felt would have been better served as an unbiased reporting of events. For instance, the author has quite a bit to say on the subject of inter-jurisdictional squabbling among the northwest suburban police departments during the Brown's investigation. A number of discursions are taken into the issue of police corruption (the section on the Summerdale police scandal is one of the largest in the book). These would have detracted from an academic historical text, but the savvy reader should keep in mind that this isn't *really* a book of history (not even really a tour guide), so much as a book of local folklore. Chicago is as much a city of myth and legend as any other in America. With that in mind, I feel the book as a whole is a success.

Fair warning, these tales really aren't for the squeamish. A number of stories involve some graphic detail, so be prepared.