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"In January 1957," Michael Newton writes, "Glatman had a brainstorm. He was moving to Los Angeles." What immediately follows -- a history of Los Angeles -- typifies the author's approach throughout this book, which includes many other mini-histories, like that of the prisons in which Glatman was incarcerated and a primer on Jews in America (just because Harvey and his parents happened to be Jewish, never mind that they were non-practicing Jews). Some of Newton's information is interesting in itself, much of it is merely distracting, and all of it is completely irrelevant. Most surprising, however, is that Newton even manages to make his own commentary on Glatman's crimes somewhat suspect and redundant, for Glatman, with an almost admirable air of wholeness and truthfulness, confessed everything, and Newton provides that confession verbatim in a later chapter. We may thank him for that -- it's the most interesting part of the book -- but it tends to undermine the entire concept of Rope, for Glatman comes off as a guy who, as serial killers go, oughtn't to rate anything more than a long article. Intuitively that seems wrong -- here's a guy who raped, bound, and photographed three women (using a tripod, no less) before murdering them, but the fact is, sad little Harvey really just wanted to screw. Neither Glatman, the available record, nor Newton is able to penetrate much deeper than that. Included in the bloat, toward the end, is an intriguing anti-profiling section that cuts against the grain of contemporary thought (or myth, as Newton would have it).
"In January 1957," Michael Newton writes, "Glatman had a brainstorm. He was moving to Los Angeles." What immediately follows -- a history of Los Angeles -- typifies the author's approach throughout this book, which includes many other mini-histories, like that of the prisons in which Glatman was incarcerated and a primer on Jews in America (just because Harvey and his parents happened to be Jewish, never mind that they were non-practicing Jews). Some of Newton's information is interesting in itself, much of it is merely distracting, and all of it is completely irrelevant. Most surprising, however, is that Newton even manages to make his own commentary on Glatman's crimes somewhat suspect and redundant, for Glatman, with an almost admirable air of wholeness and truthfulness, confessed everything, and Newton provides that confession verbatim in a later chapter. We may thank him for that -- it's the most interesting part of the book -- but it tends to undermine the entire concept of Rope, for Glatman comes off as a guy who, as serial killers go, oughtn't to rate anything more than a long article. Intuitively that seems wrong -- here's a guy who raped, bound, and photographed three women (using a tripod, no less) before murdering them, but the fact is, sad little Harvey really just wanted to screw. Neither Glatman, the available record, nor Newton is able to penetrate much deeper than that. Included in the bloat, toward the end, is an intriguing anti-profiling section that cuts against the grain of contemporary thought (or myth, as Newton would have it).
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