Review of Rope: The Twisted Life and Crimes of Harvey Glatman (Mass Market Paperback)

I've read a number of true crime books in the past. None of them has dealt with a character as strange as Harvey Glatman, a mousy little guy from New York who came to California to meet girls, and wound up tying them up and strangling them. It's a curious, strange story, and it'd be interesting if it weren't for Newton's obsession with getting every last fact before the reader.

The book includes a summary of each of the killings. Glatman essentially kidnapped the women, tied them up, photographed them, raped them, then strangled them, abandoning the bodies in the desert to the south or east of L.A. He was caught when his fourth victim fought back, and managed to get his gun away from him, running away right into the arms of a Highway Patrol officer getting off work. All of the facts of the crimes as far as the author can discern them, Glatman's trial (he pled guilty and requested execution as soon as possible) and subsequent execution, and even the disposition of the victim's personal effects, are covered in detail. It's fascinating for the most part, if a bit much.

The problem comes in the author's decision to go beyond that. He spends a chapter not only going over the killer's early life in New York, but briefly surveying the history of Jews in New York City (Glatman was Jewish and from N.Y.C.). The author seems obsessed with displaying a command of the study of serial killers which would no doubt be interesting in a survey of them. Unfortunately, given that the book is supposedly about Glatman, it's mostly distracting. To make things worse, the killings themselves are described in detail, mostly reconstructed from the interrogations the police did after Glatman was arrested. Several chapters later, the interrogations are repeated almost word for word, so that you go over the same material again. It's a bit much.

Lastly, remember that I said Glatman took photographs? They were apparently destroyed after his conviction (some of them were nude) but a newspaper in Denver got some of the milder ones and published them, and Newton reprints them. They're nothing compared with modern pornography: women bound wearing clothes, with frightened expressions on their faces. The idea that the fear is real, though, is a bit unsettling, and some may be squeamish about this.

All in all this is a solid true crime book, if a bit heavy on the detail and extraneous material.

Product Description

JOURNEY TO THE KILLING GROUND

It was an age of innocence -- an era of carhops, poodle skirts, and hula hoops. It was also a time of terror. In 1958, a man named Harvey Glatman sped along the Santa Ana freeway out of L.A., headed to the desert with his "date" huddled in the passenger seat beside him. In his pockets Harvey had a gun and a length of rope. Drunk on power, arousal, and rage, Harvey also had a plan. And beneath the desert stars, by the light of the moon, he carried out his ordeal of unimaginable cruelty -- using his body, a camera, and his rope....

Months later, after one of his inhuman attacks went awry, Harvey's torture killings were described to a shocked and silent California courtroom. For decades, these infamous deeds would inspire television and movie plots. But until now, there has been no definitive account of the forces that drove one of America's most legendary serial killers. And never before has it been explained why, for Harvey Glatman, his crimes weren't about killing, raping, and torturing at all -- they were all about the rope.

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