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A Wild Surge of Guilty Passion: A Novel

de Ron Hansen

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15910170,523 (3.34)3
A tale based on a true story from 1920s Manhattan follows the affair between voluptuous Ruth Snyder and undergarment salesman Judd Gray, whose plot to kill Ruth's husband triggers an explosive police investigation.
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A fictionalized account of a real-life murder that caused a sensation in the Roaring '20's. I wasn't familiar with the Snyder/Gray case until I picked up this book, but I found it to be an absorbing one - a sad, sordid tale of adultery, murder, and wasted lives. Oh, and stupidity. The two lovers, Ruth Snyder and Judd Gray did a really, incredibly bad job of killing Ruth's husband Albert and trying to make it look like a robbery; so much so that the press dubbed this "The Dumb-bell Murder." Back in 1927, of course you couldn't watch "Law & Order" nonstop all day every day to get tips on police procedures and how to get away with a crime, but it's still hard to believe how inept they were.

The author did an amazing job of bringing Jazz Age Manhattan and these long-ago people to life. I found myself at different points sympathetic to the players in this tragedy - the murderers, their victim, and even the family and friends left to carry on in the aftermath. If you enjoy true crime, I recommend this one. And don't forget to look on line for details of the real case and pictures. There is a creepy photo that you can easily find, taken by a photographer on the sly, at the moment Ruth was executed in the electric chair at Sing Sing. ( )
  AngeH | Jan 2, 2020 |
Ron Hansen resurrects a notorious US murder from the 1920s in this somewhat fictionalized account. It was the tabloid murder of its day. A corset salesman named Judd Gray is manipulated by a scheming woman (Ruth Snyder) to help murder her husband Albert. Ruth has tricked her husband into signing a double indemnity insurance policy, from which she stands to gain 95 thousand dollars in insurance. She uses her sexual wiles to convince mild-mannered Judd to assist in the murder.

However, the murder plans are downright stupid, and the conspirators nearly inept beyond belief. Ruth's previous attempts to kill the hapless Albert have failed (poisoning; releasing a car jack while he's working under a car). Judd goes to a local store to buy a sash weight for a murder weapon ("Only one?" the puzzled sales clerk asks, "I've never sold just one before!"). In attempting to bash the sleeping Albert with it, he misses, twice; and Ruth uses a combination of chloroform and strangulation with a wire noose to finally accomplish the deed. They then ransack the house to make it look like burglars were at work, and Judd then ties Ruth up. When the authorities arrive, she claims that "giant" "Italians" broke in to their house, killed her husband and robbed the place. "Italians" apparently were the ethnic scapegoats of convenience of the day. Of course the two are caught -- immediately. Ruth and Judd have left a long trail of unequivocal evidence of their guilt. Judd has tried to establish a truly pathetic alibi with a friend. And during questioning, the perpetrators quickly turn on one another; Ruth claims Judd did it alone, while he admits that they did it together. Ultimately they are tried, found guilty, and executed by electric chair.

The question is why author Ron Hansen has chosen to write about this murder case. There's nothing admirable or interesting about the characters -- they are hopelessly stupid and clumsy. There's no mystery as to what they did, how they did it, and why; and their crime is sordid and ugly. The case is a cheap pulp fiction story rendered in modern prose.

For my part, I was attracted to pick up the book (two dollars at a local Goodwill) for three reasons, none of them very admirable. One was the lurid cover. The second was the title -- one that turned out to be entirely misleading, since there was no "wild surge of guilty passion" involved by either party. Third was the high praise offered in paragraph-length recommendations of the book by such notables as John Irving and Joyce Carol Oates. Oates found it "mordantly funny, vividly compelling, and irresistibly readable"; as if reading from the same script, Jim Shepard found it "blackly comic, irresistibly seductive, and implacably devastating..." I cannot find a basis for any of these descriptions, and award the book 2.5 stars as mildly entertaining escapism.

Note: the Snyder/ Gray case does have one claim to fame; reading about the case helped James Cain finish writing his first novel, The Postman Always Rings Twice From the case, Cain got the idea of having two perpetrators who turn on each other after such a murder. Cain apparently thought that after the murder, Ruth sent Judd off with a poisoned bottle of liquor, in hopes of killing him off. However, this book (which is based on several legitimate historical sources) offers no indication that such an event occurred. Gray did have poison with him but he had removed it from the house at Ruth's request to cover their tracks. ( )
1 vota danielx | Nov 1, 2018 |
I really wavered between three and four stars. More than anything else, this book reminded me of Gus van Sant's shot-for-shot remake of Psycho several years ago. It's not that it's not good, it's just that I can't quite see the point. It feels like a straightforward retelling of a lurid crime story. It definitely holds one's attention--but Hansen doesn't really add anything to our understanding of the murder. I'm not sure what attracted him to the story, or what he was hoping to portray in the book. But I can't fault the writing or plot development in any way. I just wanted it to be something more. ( )
  GaylaBassham | May 27, 2018 |
I really wavered between three and four stars. More than anything else, this book reminded me of Gus van Sant's shot-for-shot remake of Psycho several years ago. It's not that it's not good, it's just that I can't quite see the point. It feels like a straightforward retelling of a lurid crime story. It definitely holds one's attention--but Hansen doesn't really add anything to our understanding of the murder. I'm not sure what attracted him to the story, or what he was hoping to portray in the book. But I can't fault the writing or plot development in any way. I just wanted it to be something more. ( )
  gayla.bassham | Nov 7, 2016 |
Certainly a swift read, good for travel, and not trash. But I don't understand why a writer as skilled as Ron Hansen bothered. The style is utterly conventional; it could have been written 80 years ago. I wish he had tried on the style of EL Doctorow in Billy Bathgate or something postmodern. Hell, modernism would do. We don't get into these characters' heads very much. They don't have the intrinsic interest of, say, Jesse James.

We don't see enough of the historic context or the texture of the city--not enough to see whether there was something very urban 1920s about this crime. There probably was something very much of the times in the degree of freedom the newly middle class Ruth--daughter of immigrants, married to son of immigrants--Prohibition, cars, summer cottages, nature of press coverage but there just isn't enough of it to chew on. ( )
  Periodista | Mar 2, 2013 |
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A tale based on a true story from 1920s Manhattan follows the affair between voluptuous Ruth Snyder and undergarment salesman Judd Gray, whose plot to kill Ruth's husband triggers an explosive police investigation.

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