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12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Virtuoso investigation of unexplainable crimes., April 14, 2001
This review is from: Vulgar Favors: Andrew Cunanan, Gianni Versace, and the Largest Failed Manhunt in U.S. History (Mass Market Paperback)
If ever there was a case that calls for an adept and lengthy analysis, this is it. Andrew Cunanan is one of the most bizarre and elusive criminals of the modern era, and this is a marvelous study of his personal history and his crimes. Maureen Orth is an experienced jouralist who began investigating Cunanan in the midst of his crime spree. Her account benefits from having actually experienced all the false leads and baseless conjecture that tainted the criminal investigation as it was happening. She does a thorough job of digging through Cunanan's childhood and the exclusive gay world he deliberately sought to infiltrate. You can't help but conclude that there never was a "real" Andrew Cunanan; he was never anything more than a series of self-invented masks. Orth does an equally comprehensive study of the first two victims, Jeff Trail and David Madson. Frustratingly, both she and the professionals are unable to come to any conclusions as to what really happened with the two murders. Lee Miglin's murder is even more mysterious. Orth largely avoids sensationalistic theorizing as to why Miglin was selected as a victim. In constrast, Cunanan's reasons for selecting the next two victims, Bill Reese and Giovani Versace, are readily apparent but no less disturbing. The absolute conclusion one can draw from the book is that Cunanan was a conscienceless sociopath and egomaniac. A truly sad and shocking story.
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9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A name in lights, December 17, 2001
I'm somewhat baffled by the number of reviewers who read specific cultural and political agendas into this book. I am not saying that they're wrong, just that I didn't perceive Orth as being particularly anti-gay or pro-gay. I actually thought her depiction of gay communities in San Diego, San Francisco and South Miami Beach was sympathetic. Gays and lesbians in this country still, in most instances, endure lives constricted by homophobia, familial indifference and the potential for victimization by intolerant heterosexuals. Any book that can put a human face on homosexuality for a mass American audience should be welcome as a step toward enlightenment and tolerance. As for Andrew Cunanan, the demons that drove him to serial murder arose from the values imposed on him by his parents at an early age, not his sexual orientation. Cunanan was a quintessential narcissist and a sociopath, always a dangerous combination no matter what social milieu. Cunanan's pathology is a great deal clearer than most heterosexual serial killers with the same personality traits because his extroversion put his materialistic cravings on public display. Had Cunanan been more circumspect in his behavior, he might have killed many more men before being run to ground. What speaks to me most in this book is Orth's depiction of a smart man who sacrificed his own personality in order to fulfill his fantasies of wealth and celebrity. When his aging body and drug habit finally caught up with him, Andrew Cunanan was a man filled with a deadly despair. Weak and inconsequential, he took up a gun to make himself a man of means, counting his riches in infamy. It must have been a cold, unfulfilling dish. Orth's primary targets for criticism aren't the gay residents of the communities named above. Instead, she reserves her barbs for the various police departments and the FBI who bungled the search for Andrew Cunanan. Had a truly coordinated effort been launched to capture him, Cunanan would never have gotten close enough to Gianni Versace (...). Instead, agencies seemed content to expend the least possible effort in finding Cunanan. If nothing else, Orth's book is a damning indictment of how law enforcement doesn't ensure public safety in the gay community with the zeal it normally reserves for the larger heterosexual community. In the end, Cunanan's perverse inversion of values would taint the lives of everyone he knew, save his younger sister Gina, the only Cunanan who refused to sell her story to the tabloid media. Ironically, Cunanan would have been delighted to know that his infamy was earning him column inches in <i>Vanity Fair</i> and top billing on tabloid television. His name in lights -- that simple vision drove Andrew Cunanan to murder five people.
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17 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
reasonably interesting story, but fairly terrible writing, May 12, 2005
This review is from: Vulgar Favors: Andrew Cunanan, Gianni Versace, and the Largest Failed Manhunt in U.S. History (Mass Market Paperback)
Sheesh! Andrew's story is fairly absorbing as far as those of serial killers go, and Orth has collected an impressive mountain of facts about it. However, this book's shortcomings far outweigh any of its strong points:
1. The text is fairly clogged with spelling errors and illiteracies of every kind. I mean, I'M embarrassed to read them, and I had nothing to do with the book!
2. Why couldn't we have pictures? Because Orth didn't want to stoop to sensationalism? Then how to explain the completely inaccurate and misleading title? At no point is it ever alleged that Cunanan performed "vulgar favors" for Versace, hence I must conclude that that title was chosen only for the basest of reasons.
3. There was no reason the book needed to be this long; it could have been much shorter and still effective. The author seemed unable to weed out uninteresting aspects of her story, instead dumping EVERY damn fact in her possession on us (e.g., do we really need two entire chapters on the history of the FBI's fliers?!?)
4. Orth just can't seem to make the characters come alive, although she evidently suffered from no lack of rich material.
5. Her prose style is mediocre and over-stylized at the same time.
6. I suppose this is inevitable when writing the life of a serial killer, but here I must accuse Orth of "playing the ending" too much. What I mean is that she goes back into his life in high school (and before) reading all these sinister meanings into the most innocuous teenageisms (what high-school boy, for example, isn't a barefaced liar?). As if he'd spent his entire life preparing to go berserk and kill Versace. Brother! Only somebody with a ludicrous and gratingly shallow understanding of human nature would have slanted her facts thus.
Avoid this one: A weak and forgettable effort.
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