Theater of Cruelty
by Jefe Von Stanley on Sep.06, 2010, under Books and Literature, Theatre
My friend John tossed me this book to review for monthly arts and politics journal The Brooklyn Rail about one of the 20th century’s first women playwrights, crime reporter turned dramatist Maurine Watkins, author of Chicago, which was a biting, satirical straight play long before it was a Kander, Ebb & Fosse musical. Enjoy the review, or, more importantly, enjoy the book.
Douglas Perry
The Girls of Murder City: Fame, Lust, and the Beautiful Killers Who Inspired ‘Chicago’
(Viking, 2010)
Close on the heels of Deborah Blum’s The Poisoner’s Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York (Penguin, 2010), comes Douglas Perry’s true crime history The Girls of Murder City: Fame, Lust, and the Beautiful Killers Who Inspired Chicago, which turned out to be a welcome companion piece.
The former is a dissection of New York City’s use and rapid improvement of nascent forensic medical techniques during the Prohibition era. Murder after murder is lovingly recreated—especially those involving poisons—and then deconstructed by über CSI experts. The latter book takes us to Prohibition-era Chi-town, where the weapon of choice wasn’t poison but pistols, and the bad guys were bad gals. **MY FULL REVIEW CONT’D AT THE BROOKLYN RAIL>>
September 17th, 2010 on 10:12 am
A subscriber wrote in with the following fascinating message:
I am a granddaughter of SABELLA NITTI. Yes, her boy toy and she killed my grandfather. She should have hung but didn’t!!! We (cousins) have found our grandfather’s grave and placed a long overdue headstone. There are no pictures of our grandfather to be found, can anyone help us put a face to the name, Frank Nitti, a Stickney, IL truck farmer!!
If you’ve read my review or Perry’s book you’ll know that Sabella Nitti was one of the “girls of Murderess’ Row” who narrowly ecaped the death chair and was sentenced to life for killing her husband. Frank by the way is not the famous gangster Frank Nitti (Nittoni). I am also forwarding this message to the publisher in case the author came across any photos of Nitti in his research. Any chance anyone else out there is related to Frank Nitti and has a photo of him? If so please post a response here and I’ll put you in touch with the granddaughter.
-Jeffrey Stanley