Paul Collins's Murder of the Century offers readers a glimpse into big city crime when fingerprints were considered unreliable, DNA testing did not exist, cops and coroners were in somebody's pocket, and journalists were as likely to solve a murder as law enforcement.
So what is the so-called murder of the century? Amid a broiling mid-summer heat wave in 1897, body parts begin turning up across New York City - a torso in the East River, limbs in Harlem, that kind of thing. But whose are they? And where is the head? And, most importantly, who is responsible? While one cop works doggedly to answer these questions, William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer use the crime as an opportunity to turn up the heat in their tabloid war with one another.
The Murder of the Century is as much a tale of yellow journalism as it is of murder. In many ways, I was reminded of the murder which captivated London just a few years later, that committed by Hawley Harvey Crippen and detailed by Erik Larson in Thunderstruck. Collins does a good job with both the journalism and the murder, but I couldn't help feeling that there just wasn't quite enough material here for a full book. As a result, the book alternates between being highly readable and completely bogged down in details that feel extraneous to the story he's telling.
Two-point-five stars.
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