Elevate Difference

Reviews tagged murder

The Girls of Murder City: Fame, Lust and the Beautiful Killers Who Inspired Chicago

During the 1920s, a rash of killings rocked Chicago. The murderers were young women who drank, and most killed their lovers. Most were white and all-male juries that refused to believe women were capable of cold-blooded murder released most of them. During this time, the crimes were reported in the newspapers by “sob sisters,” female reporters who were able to interview female inmates and victim’s family members.

Beautiful Boy

Considering how common the tragedy of school shootings has become in our society, it is strange how infrequently this phenomena appears on both the silver and the TV screen. Perhaps this is because understanding these incidents is difficult, even when it comes to fiction. In Beautiful Boy, director Shawn Ku attempts to explore unanswerable questions by depicting a married couple who are torn apart by the death of their son, a college student who is both the victim and culprit of a massively fatal school shooting.

Each and Her

It can be easy and convenient to forget facts learned and impressions made about our southern neighbor, Mexico. Because I like to think of myself as conscious and conscientious of both international news and poetry, I was surprised by my recent discovery of Each and Her by Valerie Martínez. A widely anthologized poet and former poet laureate of Santa Fe, Martínez has been recognized for a career’s worth of community outreach and education, and even for translating Uruguayan poetry.

Making a Killing: Femicide, Free Trade, and La Frontera

Making a Killing is a collection of essays exploring the history and social/political/economic context of the murders of women in Juarez, Mexico from 1993 to the present day. Essays analyze the economic context of free trade that has contributed to a culture that devalues women workers and sees female bodies as expendable in the making of cheap products for American women. Essays examine activists’ and artists’ efforts to gain attention for the plight of women in Juarez, analyze the culture of law enforcement in Juarez, and vividly portray the efforts of mothers and relatives to get justice for their missing and murdered daughters.

The Monochrome Madonna

For the last year or so now, I have been avidly pursuing murder mysteries by an Indian author or with an Indian connection. Some have turned out very good, and some were simply tolerable. The latest in this genre to fall in my way is The Monochrome Madonna by Kalpana Swaminathan (of Kalpish Ratna fame). I approached the book very positively, having read much praise of their work, but I have to confess that The Monochrome Madonna left me feeling let down.

A Kind of Intimacy

In Jenn Ashworth’s debut novel, A Kind of Intimacy, the reader follows a few weeks of Annie's life. Annie is not exactly a well person. She doesn’t have much going for her either. Her father was abusive and she married early partly to leave home and partly because she doesn’t have anything better to do.

'Til Death

In 'Til Death, the third and final installment for bestselling series Secret Society, Miasha takes us on a whirlwind adventure of sex, drugs, fame, and money. 'Til Death picks up where its predecessor Never Enough left off, and now fans can follow Celess and Sienna (better know as Si-Si) as they travel the world trying to avoid police who have accused them of murder and the psychopathic murderer who wants Si-Si dead. This fast-paced story takes you to places such as Rome, Italy; Cape Town, South Africa; and Dubai as our two leading ladies live off of rich men while building up an extremely successful escort agency.

The Killer Inside Me

The song "He Hit Me (And It Felt Like a Kiss)" sums up all Jim Thompson’s oeuvre. When he wrote his novels (mostly in the '50s) they were rightly regarded as violent misogynist twaddle.

The Red Riding Trilogy

Movies about rape, murder, and child abuse should not be photographed this beautifully. Channel Four Film’s Red Riding Trilogy, shown as a miniseries in the UK but as three movies in the U.S., is one larger story connected by characters, place and the unrepentant horror of Yorkshire, in the northern England. In the north, as the characters say, they do what they want. The three films are set in three years, 1974, 1980, and 1983, respectively.

Cook the Books

Cook the Books is part of a series of mystery books (Gourmet Girl Mysteries) by mother-daughter writing team Jessica Conant-Park and Susan Conant. Chloe is a graduate student in her mid twenties, who lives by herself and has a passion for food. She has an incredibly gorgeous best friend named Adrianna, who is married to a goofy but honest and lovable free-spirited (broke) man named Owen.

September Fair: A Murder-by-Month Mystery

Librarian and small-town reporter Mira James discovers the dead body of the latest Milkfed Mary, Queen of the Dairy, while covering the Minnesota State Fair for the local newspaper. Milkfed Mary is teenaged Ashley Pederson. Mira is covering a carving of Ashley’s head in butter as part of the Queen of the Dairy ceremony when the lights go out in the Dairy building. A few moments later Mira finds Ashley on the floor of a refrigerated booth, her skin a strange shade of red. Ashley’s body is the fifth Mira has discovered in the last few months.

Love You to Death

Love You to Death raises many moral questions: How far would you go to have a loved one returned to you? Would you fly halfway around the world on a moments’ notice because you had a hunch something was wrong? Would you put your own life in danger to save a loved one? Catching a last minute flight from Hong Kong to Illinois cost Elise McBride a fortune, but she would pay that numerous times over to make sure her sister came home safely.

Sleep No More

It starts in young children and for many continues throughout the early adult years: being afraid of night, the dark, and anything associated with what might happen when we close our eyes. Imagine closing your eyes while safe in your bed and then opening them find to find yourself standing in the middle of the living room. You have no recollection on how you got there or what you may have done in the process of getting there.

Dead Floating Lovers

Set in the lush landscape of upper Michigan, Dead Floating Lovers (the second in Elizabeth Kane Buzzelli's series of the Emily Kincaid mysteries) chronicles the experiences of aspiring mystery writer Emily Kincaid, who is enmeshed in one investigation after another as a journalist-cum-sidekick for the local law—her friend Deputy Dolly Wakowski. Floating in a remote upper Michigan lake, Deputy Dolly discovers bones that she thinks belong to her

Women Who Kill

Let me first just throw the creepiness right out there and admit I am a big fan of all media coverage related to serial killers. I love the horrible shows like Cold Case Files, and I love the even crappier rushed books written about every case.

Little Bird of Heaven

Oates' thirty-sixth novel grapples with familiar themes: the rocky underside of marriage, racial injustice, childhood trauma, sexual obsession, and the ways gender plays out among various subsets of the U.S. working classes. The story is set in fictitious Sparta, New York, a once thriving town seven-to-eight hours north of Manhattan. A former center of industry, the area was left high-and-dry when the factories that employed almost everyone relocated in the 1970s.

Lizzie Borden (09/10/2009)

How do you spin a nursery rhyme into a full-length musical? In this case, the uber-creepy poem in question is, thankfully, based in reality: the eponymous Lizzie Borden who reputedly “took an axe” and “gave her father forty whacks” was a real life New England girl accused—and acquitted—of murdering both her parents in the late nineteenth century, so there’s more than enough material to mine.

Woman Into Wolf: A TrueCrimeTale

I haven’t read a true crime story in a long time, and I was really looking forward to it. I was mildly disappointed, then, to learn that Woman Into Wolf “combines the events of several real cases, but other than Digger, who was a real dog, and the Bird Lady, who was a real person, characters must be considered inventions of the author.” It’s not true crime, I don’t think, if it’s been made up, even if the events purportedly did happen.

Erased: Missing Women, Murdered Wives

When a crime is committed, the public wants to know why.

Never Tell a Lie

In a suburban area in Massachusetts, David and Ivy Rose host a yard sale as a way of getting rid of items left in the attic by previous owners of their recently purchased Victorian home. During the sale, a woman named Melinda, whom they both knew in high school, informs David and Ivy that as a child she played in the house they now own and would like to see the inside again.

When Mothers Kill: Interviews from Prison

Perhaps predictably, _When Mothers Kill: Interviews from Prison_ is not a fun or heartening read; it is a somewhat scholarly book featuring in-depth accounts of women who have murdered their own children.

The Daughters of Juarez: A True Story of Serial Murder South of the Border

I have always assumed that every feminist knows about the murders in Juarez, Mexico. I have been obsessed with the murders and available news reports (or lack there of) for the past couple of years. So when I saw that the first non-fiction book to be published about the Juarez femicide was coming out, I was incredibly excited to see that these events would finally be discussed in an accessible format. As I started reading the book, I couldn't put it down. I carried it with me everywhere, as these women's stories filled my head and my heart.
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