I read this at a time when I was reading about the issues of capital punishment. I didn't find it helpful. Still, I sort of hate rating it, since readers who are not irritated by the same things I am might enjoy at least her analysis of books, particularly if your tastes run towards the noir.

Lesser gives several descriptions of what she intends to do in this book, such as examining the intersection of murder and art, and asking philosophical questions. It seems that she actually wants to indulge in discussing murders and executions (she sees executions as murder), referencing whatever materials interest her, whether literary, journalistic, non-fiction, movies, pictures, etc., to no clear end. She goes off on little tangents: the main thing that she tells us about Paul Theroux's Chicago Loop is that she likes his description of Robert Mapplethorpe's photographs. There's nothing wrong with that per se, if she can make it interesting enough to engage the reader's interest. Clearly, by my rating, she failed in my case, although it would be helpful if I was compiling a list of fiction I never wish to read or movies I never intend to see.

Interwoven with the blather are the events and issues involved in the execution of Richard Alton Harris at San Quentin prison, particularly the legal quest by a television station to broadcast the execution. If this had been the sole subject of the book, I would have found it vastly more interesting. Until the end, it took generally got lost in the literary review. By the time she really focused on it, I was just counting down the pages. The book had no effect on my opinion of capital punishment, having brought nothing new to the discussion. If you already agree with her, you may like it better.

The first thing that I dislike about her book is her use of the word "we." Whenever I see that, I want to as, "we who?" If you want to know what "we" think, you have to survey us in some fashion, and despite what she thinks, that can't be accomplished while sitting at a desk idiosyncratically reviewing cherry-picked sources. One also needs to establish that there is a "we" whose opinions are similar enough to generalize. And in a related issue, I detest being told what I think, as when Lesser keeps stating "our" reaction to something highly specific and personal. I don't care if other authors do that, I consider it illegitimate.

She actually states at one point that when she says "we," she means "I," so why doesn't she use "I" consistently? I suspect that she thinks that the use of "we" gives more authority and weight to her personal opinions, but she says that she means "I" to give herself an out when challenged.

She keeps trying to answer questions about "our fascination" with murder, whether "our" interest is with the detective, the victim or the murderer, and whether there are moral issues here. Again, this cannot be answered from her personal interests, nor as a generalization. I personally see no moral difference in taking an interest in murders and in anything else that goes on around us: politics, war, floods, famines, literature, opera, educational standards, etc. I would consider myself morally derelict to take no interest. I find it ridiculous to argue that people who write about true crime are in some way accessories to it. Her attempts to raise moral issues leaves me less challenged to think than inclined to suspect she is morally tone-deaf, or just lost in her own pretensions.

I think that her writing reaches her nadir when she giddily tries to find symbolism in a stock film showing the gas chamber in a California prison. She remarks that the guards, the keys, the walls all "suggest imprisonment." No, they are imprisonment, unless you agree with Richard Lovelace that "Stone walls do not a prison make, Nor iron bars a cage." The humorous writer Richard Armour had a funny scene in which Lovelace's fellow prisoners shake their heads sadly; they know what is keeping them there. I showed the section to a friend who was a presentencing investigator. I can't describe the look on her face, but when part of one's job is to be locked, alone, in a cell with a potentially violent client in order to have a private interview, these things are not nearly so amusing.

She goes on to find symbolism in the fact that the lock turns clock-wise, although she admits that most locks do, thus suggesting time running out in the life of the condemned. If it turned, counter-clock-wise, no doubt she would also find it symbolic, like a timer running down, and if it flipped down to lock it could be reminiscent of a guillotine or the drop in a hanging.

All in all, I found this too irritating to have an impact on my thinking. ( )