Madison Square tragedy : the murder of Stanford White is another entry in Rick Geary's series of graphic novels about true crimes. I'd read a chapter on this murder in a true crime book. As I recall, this was being touted as the crime of the century back then. One thing for modern USA readers to keep in mind is that the minimum age for being an adult back then was 21, not 18.

Some of what is contained in this book I knew, but it provided more detail than that chapter did. Yes, Stanford White was a womanizer, but that he was nearly broke by the time he was killed, was news. White did not seduce Evelyn while she was in full possession of her faculties (drugged wine).

I don't recall knowing hoe Evelyn's family spent years in poverty after her father died and before she was able to earn money as an artists' model.

I believe I knew that Harry K. Thaw was a drug addict, but not what he had done to Evelyn in Austria. Given that insanity ran in both of his parents' families, I suspect he would have spent most of his life in and out of jail had his widowed mother not been so very rich. Three things Thaw got in trouble for after the third trial are mentioned in the section on his life after the murder.

If DNA tests had existed in 1910, Thaw couldn't have claimed that Evelyn's son wasn't his. Her life after divorce freed her from Thaw may have been difficult, but it was nice that she spent her last years as an artist.

Readers looking for an account of the Stanford White murder with just enough detail should find it here. ( )

I've admired Rick Geary's ability to put a complex historical incident into quaint little boxes and somehow make it clear in the process, and his ability to reveal grayish characters in black-and-white drawings. He does all of that in this squalid tale, but he does one thing more, with the aid of an excellent map: he brings to life the glittering, hypocritical, rotten subculture where Stanford White, Harry Thaw, and Evelyn Nesbit played their parts. ( )