Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, October 10, 1993 TAG: 9310100262
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: D-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Reviewed by LANA WHITED
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
A PRESCRIPTION FOR MURDER: The Victorian serial killings of Dr. Thomas Neill Cream. By Angus McLaren. University of Chicago Press. $22.50.
"Spoken in Darkness" and "A Prescription for Murder" deal with women's victimization by men and, in a larger sense, by society. These books are much more than prospective candidates for next year's true-crime movies-of-the-week.
Rather than the standard attempt to explain what motivated person A to kill person B, "Spoken in Darkness" follows the route of Judith Rossner's "Looking for Mr. Goodbar." Like Rossner, Imbrie is troubled by the question, "what's a nice girl like you doing in a murder like this?" Even more uniquely, Imbrie asks, "if we were so similar in sixth grade, how come I ended up teaching English at Vassar and you ended up buried in a garbage bag?"
Imbrie's investigation into Lee Snavely's adult life of drugs and prostitution was fueled by a strong identification with her junior high best friend: each woman detached from her parents (Snavely emotionally and physically, Imbrie emotionally and philosophically) and each struggled with small-town social attitudes. Imbrie writes, "My mother would have been looking for me if I'd been missing, as Lee had been, but she also couldn't see me when I was right there."
"Spoken in Darkness" also explores women's vulnerability to men like Gary Taylor, Snavely's killer. Repeatedly arrested for offenses against women and released by a system which believed him rehabilitated, Taylor was filled with so much hatred for women that Imbrie had asked the state of Washington to notify her if he were released again. Imbrie notes painfully, "Most of the dead people in this story are women."
Imbrie's book is structurally sound. It contains many graceful turns of phrase, not surprising for an English professor. Encountering a fellow researcher in a public records office, for example, Imbrie observes, "I know that even when he finds the facts, he may not know the story, because the facts can mask a tale as well as tell one."
Like Truman Copote in "In Cold Blood," Imbrie withholds the description of the murder itself until the book's climax, a strategy which certainly keeps the reader turning pages.
But in Part Five, Imbrie makes an error in judgement: she imagines herself a passenger in the van which carried Lee Snavely to the basement torture chamber where she died. The scene is sometimes terrifying, as Imbrie puts herself (and the reader) in the position of anticipating the violence to come, but it has the feel of dream sequences in movies, taking itself so seriously that it often just seems silly.
"A Prescription for Murder" also deals with the worlds of prostitutes and drugs, in this case, strychnine and the South London prostitutes of Victorian England. Angus McLaren's heavily documented account includes over 60 pages of endnotes and bibliography and examines the emergence of the serial murderer in the peculiar atmosphere of late-19th-century working-class London.
One of the most interesting aspects of McLaren's discussion is his attempt to explain why Dr. Thomas Neill Cream, who killed at least four women in England and three in North America, has been so completely overshadowed in the popular imagination by Jack the Ripper (who, according to McLaren, was probably responsible for fewer murders).
Part of a series on "Sexuality, History and Society" produced by the University of Chicago Press, McLaren's book deals less with the details of the murders themselves than with an examination of a society which fostered attitudes about women like those of Thomas Neill Cream.
McLaren's thesis - that serial murderers exemplify rather than deviate from the morals and mores of their culture - will undoubtedly be difficult for many readers to swallow, but he presents convincing discussions of how Cream's story "open[s] a window, both into the mind of a murderer and into a remarkable range of intimate aspects of the Victorian age."
These two books will appeal to a readership much narrower than true-crime aficionados. "Spoken in Darkness" will be most meaningful for women whose adolescence, like Imbrie's, coincided with the 1960s, who grew up with Vietnam on the television and Grace Slick on the stereo, and who felt that the world harbored dangers foreign to their parents.
"A Prescription for Murder" will appeal to readers interested in Victorian England or in the history of women's place in society.
Taken in tandem, Imbrie's and McLaren's books offer interesting commentary on how much (or how little) attitudes toward women have changed in over a century. "Spoken in Darkness" disturbingly suggests that women in contemporary America are, like those in Victorian England, often neglected by social institutions - including their own families _ and that the price they pay may be their lives.
Lana Whited teaches English and journalism at Ferrum College and recently completed a dissertation about fact-based homicide novels.
by CNB