Post # 34

Saturday, December 15, 2018
Quote for the day: "Anybody who lives in Detroit lives the blues sometimes, if not all the time." Pat Halley, a reporter for the Fifth Estate. 1973.


Reviews



The Kill Jar: Obsession, Descent, and a Hunt for Detroit's Most Notorious Serial Killer
J. Reuben Appelman

In the winter of 1976 and 1977 four Detroit children were abducted, molested, killed and dumped in snowbanks on the side of roads uncomfortably close to where the author lived. Called the Oakland County Child Killings (OCCK) the case resulted in the largest homicide investigation in state history and to this day has resulted in no one being charged for the four murders or abductions. The author was seven at the time of the murders and probably escaped with his life when a man who fit the general description of an OCCK suspect tried but failed to abduct him.

Appelman became obsessed with the murders, of which he might have become the fifth victim, and is still haunted by the parental violence and emotional abuse he suffered as a child. This memoir is a compelling and painful account of the author's decade-long research into the murders and his lasting emotional wounds from a traumatic childhood.

The author's revelations concerning the police investigation into the killings and the persistent presence of a well-organized network of pedophiles who, as a group and as individuals, sexually preyed on children are both unsettling and outrageous. A wealthy pedophile who owned North Fox Island in northern Lake Michigan registered his island as a boys' camp and received state and federal reimbursement for flying children to his camp where they were molested and raped
by paying members of his pedophile club. The author firmly believes the killer had connections with the Fox Island owner and the club. When it was finally uncovered by the Michigan State Police and they seized a membership list studded with influential names the list was lost or purposely destroyed.  Other evidence collected by Detroit and suburban police also had a way of disappearing. Eventually, the author comes to the conclusion police covered up crime scene evidence and intentionally or otherwise deflected attention away from prime suspects. 

One of the young female victims was last seen getting into a patrol car with a policeman before her body was found abandoned beside a road. Those who witnessed the girl getting in the officer's car or heard the story second-hand and called it in as a tip were later found dead from apparent suicides. One of the prime suspects and a known child molester was found dead in his bed, rolled up tightly in a blanket alongside a rifle. The man had a single, fatal bullet hole in his forehead. In spite of the fact that the man's arms were inside the blanket and there was no gunpowder residue on his hands the police declared it a suicide.

The author piles up one disturbing piece of damning evidence after another until the reader is left wondering if the thirty-year investigation of the killings was simply, but innocently and horribly mismanaged, or is a case of criminal mismanagement and a cover-up. One is also left contemplating the likely possibility that the four children were passed from pedophile to pedophile and finally handed off to a killer. The book raises many disturbing facts and questions, among the latter, is how deep, active, and widespread is the pedophile underground in today's society?

Woven within this horrific story is the author's struggle to come to grips with his own tormented childhood that was dominated by a cruel and unloving father who left his son emotionally damaged.

This is a powerful, shocking, and an emotionally charged true crime story. Yes, at times it is uncomfortable reading no matter how well written. But turning away from this book because it is unsettling is the equivalent of turning away from dealing with the threat of pedophilia in today's society because the subject is too upsetting. The author is currently adding the finishing touches to a four-part television documentary based on the Kill Jar.
 
The Kill Jar: Obsession, Descent, and A Hunt for Detroit's Most Notorious Serial Killer by J. Reuben Appelman. Gallery Books, 2018, $24.99.



In Want of a Knife
by Elizabeth Kane Buzzelli

A return visit to the fictional village of Bear Falls, Michigan, located somewhere between Traverse City and Charlevoix, is always fun. Although the author is rather non-specific when it comes to the town's exact location any traveler will know they have arrived because they will instantly realize Bear Falls' population has more eccentrics per capita than anyplace in America except our nation's capital. And unlike Bear Falls, those found in the latter are usually defined as eccentric simply by their overwhelming sense of self-importance.

Things are a-buzz in the village when a multi-millionaire moves to town with a small retinue of his own odd friends and calls a meeting to announce he is giving Bear Falls a two-million-dollar gift. The catch is the town's people must decide on what to spend the money.  Among those attending the announcement are the series three main characters; Jenny, back home from Chicago after her marriage went bad, Dora her mother with whom she lives, and their next-door neighbor Zoe Zola.   Zola is a "Little Person," a semi-famous writer of scholarly books on Jane Austin, and along with Jenny, the town's unofficial ace murder investigator.

It comes as a big surprise the town's new resident and benefactor is also a "Little Person." Unexpectedly the two "Little People" fail to see eye-to-eye, so to speak, in fact, they hit it off like roughly shaken nitro and glycerine. The town is also rocked by the discovery of a murdered girl and the disappearance of another young lady. Of course, Jenny and Zoe dive into solving the murder and disappearance. The town's sheriff has only one deputy and seems to expect the two women to help him solve the mysteries. 

In any other small town in Michigan in which a girl was murdered and another missing, it would be expected that the Michigan State Police and county sheriff investigators would be all over the case like down on a duck's back. But Bear Falls is eccentric and with official law enforcement mostly in the background, and contributing little, Zoe and Jenny out do Hercule Perot.  

So there must be some suspension of belief when it comes to the plot. The real charm of the book and what keeps one reading is the people of Bear Falls, the truly unique character Zoe Zola, and the friendship between the quirky Jane Austin scholar and a young woman trying to heal the wounds of a bad marriage and discover what and who she is.  This reader, although concerned by the incredibly high per capita murder rate of Bear Falls, would move there in an instant. Admittedly, I'm not a gambler and can't figure the odds of a coin flip coming up heads or tails. But really, when the fourth book in this Little Library Mystery series is published, what are the odds of yet another murder in this near idyllic and friendly town? 


In Want of a Knife by Elizabeth Kane Buzzelli. Crooked Lane Books, 2018, $26.99


All books reviewed in this blog can be purchased by clicking your mouse on the book's cover which will take you to Amazon where you can usually purchase the book at a discount. By using this blog as a portal to Amazon and purchasing any product helps support Michigan in Books.
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Post # 33

Saturday, December 1, 2018
Quote of the day: "The Man-Devouring Lake." The Chippewa's name for Lake Michigan.


Reviews


Across the Great Lake
by Lee Zacharias



Simply put, this is an extraordinary novel. In 1936 Fern is five-years-old, lives in Frankfort, Michigan and her father is a captain of an Ann Arbor Railroad Car Ferry that transports rail freight cars across Lake Michigan from Frankfort to Menominee year-round. As the book opens, Fern's mother has become too ill to take care for her (in fact she's dying) so her father takes his daughter aboard the ferry for a winter crossing of Lake Michigan. For Fern, it is the adventure of a lifetime and the book is Fern's vivid, detailed recollection of the eventful voyage as she remembers it as both an eighty-year-old woman and a five-year-old girl. One of the great achievements of the novel is how a life-changing event eighty years in the past is recalled and influenced by the process of aging and at the same time is seemingly relived by a five-year-old as it occurs. The co-mingling of the memories from the perspective of then and now adds depth and nuance to a wholly engrossing story.  

The ferry becomes stuck in ice after barely leaving the harbor, rescues another ferry captured by the ice, faces a terrible storm, and is threatened by a variety of hazards common to ships and sailors who ply the waters of the great freshwater seas. Even seen through the eyes of a five-year-old the book is a marvelous recreation of life aboard a railroad ferry in the 1930s and the crew members are so believably drawn they seem to walk right off the page.

In alternating chapters, Fern tells of her life in Frankfort in 1930s and 40s in such detail it comes alive on the page. She also recounts how the voyage altered the course of her life and led her in unexpected directions. And as Fern relives the voyage in her eighties the more she grows confused as to who she is. The little girl on a great adventure or the old woman she's become.

It is obvious even without looking at the extensive bibliography that the author did an impressive amount of research. But what is really remarkable is her skill at weaving a great story within the warp and woof of the facts. The book is immensely readable except for  the author's stunningly arresting sentences that beg to be reread, highlighted, or flagged such as: "..when you grow up on the shore of a great lake you learn its moods, and observing those you begin to learn the inconstancy of the world." Or, "I don't think there is anything quite so pure as the sight of an egret taking flight on a clear morning, like a clean, white handkerchief flung against the bright blue sky." Lastly, my favorite. When people told Fern she grew up in innocent times she reflects, "that innocence is just ignorance dressed up in nice clothes."

This book has to be a solid gold lock for being listed on Michigan Notable Books of the Year. If not, there's something wrong with how books are selected for the list.
Across the Great Lake by Lee Zacharais. University of Wisconsin Press, 2018, $23.95, hardback. 



Elemental: A Collection of Michigan Creative Nonfiction
edited by Anne-Marie Oomen

The blurb on the back of the jacket states that this book of essays, "approaches Michigan at the atomic level." Frankly, I have no idea what that means. One of my favorite essays in the book has the writer following the Niagara Escarpment which stretches from Niagara Falls around the northern edges of Lakes Huron and Michigan before it disappears somewhere south of Green Bay, Wisconsin. Until I read the essay I had no idea that the beautiful 90-foot-high limestone cliffs lining Snail Shell Harbor in Fayette Historic State Park in the UP -- one of my favorite spots in Michigan -- is part of the escarpment. That and many other of the fine essays found here hardly seem to reach the sub-microscopic "atomic level."

What the reader will find is a wonderful collection of personal, and often deeply personal, essays by Michigan authors writing about how their and our lives are entwined with our state's complex natural setting, climate, landscape, and environmental issues.  No better example of what I am desperately trying to explain is a woman writing of her first winter in Michigan as if it was a first date. Now that is creative nonfiction.

The book opens with a heartfelt story of growing up a farmer in Michigan's Thumb and how an immigrant family put down roots in the area's rich soil just like the crops they sowed. It speaks beautifully of the intimacy farmers have with the earth and there are passages that describe the land in prose that is often as lyrical as poetry. Another essay details in passionate and personal outrage the poisoning of the state's rivers, streams, inland lakes and the Great Lakes themselves. The author scathingly describes the 50-year-old, dented, rusted, corroding, oil pipeline with its missing supports that carries 20 million-plus gallons of oil a day under the Straits of Mackinac. 

I found Jerry Dennis' essay on his work in construction prior to becoming a full-time writer especially compelling. For five years he worked with a talented crew of carpenters who truly enjoyed their job of building condos on some of the most beautiful and scenic landscape in the Leelanau Peninsula. His crew members are sharply drawn characters and Dennis captures the comradery of the crew and the pride they take in their work. And even as they took pride in a job well done, the men regretted that the land on which they built condos would no longer remain undeveloped and open to all. To quote Dennis, "And the hunting in the park was very good, as was the fishing in its lakes and streams. The men wanted the place to stay as it was; and they wanted the freedom to build on it at will." The last sentence could serve as our species' epitaph. 

The book is packed with thoughtful, poignant, funny, and provocative personal essays that make the reader look anew at our extraordinary home state.

Elemental: A Collection of Michigan Creative Nonfiction edited by Anne-Marie Oomen. Wayne State University Press, 2018, $19.99. www.wsupress.wayne.edu/books/detail/elemental.


All of the books reviewed in this blog can be purchased by clicking your mouse on the book's cover which will take you to Amazon where you can usually purchase the book at a discount. By using this blog as a portal to Amazon and purchasing any product helps support Michigan in Books.





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