Book Review: The Murder of the Century

Paul Collins' murder mystery is riveting because it's entirely true.  The Murder of the Century is the historical account of an 1897 murder that enraptured the entire city of New York.  After pieces of a corpse are found in separate packages around the city, New Yorkers went wild trying to determine who the victim was and who could have committed the crime.  It was all anyone could talk about for months due to the involvement of two of the biggest newspapers of the time, the New York Journal and the New York World.  These papers, helmed by the Hearst and Pulitzer families, respectively, embroiled themselves in the case as much as the police as they each tried to take out each other with more and more salacious headlines.

As interesting as the case itself is, another draw to this book is reading about the same streets I walk down every day and how different they were 115 years ago.  It is hard to believe people used to be able to swim in the East River or that the top of the city used to be all woods with nary a shack in sight.  I don't typically read historical works, but Collins keeps the reader's attention by writing it as a novel.  I suppose this time in history at the turn of the century was so exciting, the truth is more interesting than fiction.