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The Girls of Murder City
- Fame, Lust, and the Beautiful Killers Who Inspired Chicago
- Narrated by: Peter Berkrot
- Length: 10 hrs and 11 mins
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Publisher's summary
Chicago, 1924. There was nothing surprising about men turning up dead in the Second City. Life was cheaper than a quart of illicit gin in the gangland capital of the world. But two murders that spring were special - worthy of celebration. So believed Maurine Watkins, a wanna-be playwright and a "girl reporter" for the Chicago Tribune, the city's "hanging paper".
Newspaperwomen were supposed to write about clubs, cooking, and clothes, but the intrepid Miss Watkins, a minister's daughter from a small town, zeroed in on murderers instead. Looking for subjects to turn into a play, she would make "Stylish Belva" Gaertner and "Beautiful Beulah" Annan - both of whom had brazenly shot down their lovers - the talk of the town. Love-struck men sent flowers to the jail, and newly emancipated women sent impassioned letters to the newspapers. Soon more than a dozen women preened and strutted on "Murderesses' Row" as they awaited trial, desperate for the same attention that was being lavished on Maurine Watkins's favorites.
In the tradition of Erik Larson's The Devil in the White City and Karen Abbott's Sin in the Second City, Douglas Perry vividly captures Jazz Age Chicago and the sensationalized circus atmosphere that gave rise to the concept of the celebrity criminal. Fueled by rich period detail and enlivened by a cast of characters who seemed destined for the stage, The Girls of Murder City is crackling social history that simultaneously presents the freewheeling spirit of the age and its sober repercussions.
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Fans of the award-winning musical Chicago will find plenty to like in The Girls of Murder City. Though it doesn’t have the catchy songs or choreographer Bob Fosse’s fancy footwork, this nonfiction look at the women who inspired the show gives plenty of salacious behind-the-scenes details about the murder trials that fascinated an entire city.
In 1924, aspiring reporter Maureen Watkins earned a spot on the crime beat at the Chicago Tribune, where she covered the sensational stories of alleged killers Belva Gaertner and Beulah Annan. Gaertner and Annan were just two (although the most famous two) of the women on Murderesses’ Row, a wing that housed pretty young things awaiting trial for killing their husbands or lovers. Watkins’ editor made the most of her sweet temper and sympathetic looks, dispatching her for quotes and interviews that other reporters couldn’t get and it paid off: Watkins’ front-page stories were must-reads, filled with her own voice and style, that she turned into a play called Chicago in 1926. The story of Gaertner and Annan, now immortalized as Roxie Hart and Velma Kelly, also inspired a silent film, a Broadway musical, and a movie that earned the Academy Award for Best Picture in 2003.
Nonfiction books can get a little dull, but author Douglas Perry has plenty of spicy material to work with. He seamlessly weaves old newspaper articles, research, quotes, and commentary into a story about our obsession with celebrity murderers, while incorporating the biggest issues of the Jazz age including Prohibition and the rise of feminism. Narrator Peter Berkrot shifts from facts to scandal with an effortlessly smooth reading; Supporting characters including Watkins’ rival reporters, the murderesses’ cuckolded husbands, the murder victims’ widows, and the lawyers who turned the cases into an opportunity for fame get their own individual voices. Berkrot gives Gaertner and Annan readings that show how they walked the line between cold-blooded killers and coquettish young women making The Girls of Murder City a solid listen for history buffs, Law & Order fans, and Broadway lovers alike. Blythe Copeland
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- Unabridged
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Arguably the most important American lawyer of the 20th century, Thurgood Marshall was on the verge of bringing the landmark suit Brown v. Board of Education before the US Supreme Court when he became embroiled in a case that threatened to change the course of the civil rights movement and to cost him his life. In 1949, Florida's orange industry was booming, and citrus barons got rich on the backs of cheap Jim Crow labor with the help of Sheriff Willis V. McCall, who ruled Lake County with murderous resolve....
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the fight for civil rights
- By Jean on 01-17-14
By: Gilbert King
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No Lesser Plea
- Butch Karp and Marlene Ciampi, Book 1
- By: Robert K. Tanenbaum
- Narrated by: Traber Burns
- Length: 11 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Roger "Butch" Karp has been around New York long enough to realize that the judicial system can be dirty and cynical. But he still believes in justice. So when a vicious sociopath tries to dodge a brutal murder charge by convincing the court he is incompetent to stand trial, Karp teams up with firecracker Assistant DA Marlene Ciampi to unleash the full force of their relentless energy, hardboiled wit, and passion for the truth to put the killer away for good. They will accept no lesser plea.
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A Decent LIsten
- By Ted on 08-31-14
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In Contempt
- By: Christopher A. Darden, Jess Walter - contributor
- Narrated by: Christopher Darden
- Length: 2 hrs and 45 mins
- Abridged
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This number-one New York Times best seller is an unflinching look at what the television cameras could not show: behind-the-scenes meetings, the deteriorating relationships between the defense and prosecution teams, the taunting, baiting, and pushing matches between Darden and Simpson, the intimate relationship between Darden and Marcia Clark, and the candid factors behind Darden's controversial decision for Simpson to try on the infamous glove, and much more.
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Author-narrated/well-written - yet abridged
- By J.Chin on 06-28-16
By: Christopher A. Darden, and others
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A Death in Belmont
- By: Sebastian Junger
- Narrated by: Kevin Conway
- Length: 8 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1963, with the city of Boston already terrified by a series of savage crimes known as the Boston Stranglings, a murder occurred in Belmont, just a few blocks from the house of Sebastian Junger's family, a murder that seemed to fit exactly the pattern of the Strangler. Roy Smith, a black man who had cleaned the victim's house that day, was convicted, but the terror of the Strangler continued.
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Excellent
- By Susanna on 01-13-15
By: Sebastian Junger
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Sin in the Second City
- Madams, Ministers, Playboys, and the Battle for America's Soul
- By: Karen Abbott
- Narrated by: Joyce Bean
- Length: 11 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Karen Abbott's colorful, nuanced portrait of the iconic Everleigh sisters; their world-famous brothel, the Everleigh Club; and the perennial clash between our nation's hedonistic impulses and Puritanical roots culminates in a dramatic last stand between brothel keepers and crusading reformers. Sin in the Second City offers a vivid snapshot of America's journey from Victorian-era propriety to 20th-century modernity.
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Great book - brilliant narrator!
- By Z. Halley on 04-17-10
By: Karen Abbott
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Satan's Circus
- Murder, Vice, Police Corruption, and New York's Trial of the Century
- By: Mike Dash
- Narrated by: Robertson Dean
- Length: 12 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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They called it Satan's Circus, a square mile of Midtown Manhattan where vice ruled, sin flourished, and depravity danced in every doorway. At the turn of the 20th century, murder was so common in the vice district that few people were surprised when the loudmouthed owner of a shabby casino was gunned down on the steps of its best hotel.
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New York, N.Y
- By Robert on 07-11-07
By: Mike Dash
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House of Evil
- The Indiana Torture Slaying
- By: John Dean
- Narrated by: John Glouchevitch
- Length: 6 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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In the heart of Indianapolis in the mid-1960s, through a twist of fate and fortune, a pretty young girl came to live with a 37-year-old mother and her seven children. What began as a temporary childcare arrangement between Sylvia Likens's parents and Gertrude Baniszewski turned into a crime that would haunt cops, prosecutors, and a community for decades to come. When police found Sylvia's emaciated body, with a chilling message carved into her flesh, they knew that she had suffered tremendously before her death.
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Horrific
- By Karri on 05-29-18
By: John Dean
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Incendiary
- The Psychiatrist, the Mad Bomber, and the Invention of Criminal Profiling
- By: Michael Cannell
- Narrated by: Peter Berkrot
- Length: 9 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Long before the specter of terrorism haunted the public imagination, a serial bomber stalked the streets of 1950s New York. The race to catch him would give birth to a new science called criminal profiling. Grand Central, Penn Station, Radio City Music Hall - for almost two decades, no place was safe from the man who signed his anonymous letters "FP" and left his lethal devices in phone booths, storage lockers, even tucked into the plush seats of movie theaters.
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16 Years NYC Held Hostage
- By in1ear (John Row) on 04-27-17
By: Michael Cannell
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The Onion Field
- By: Joseph Wambaugh
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis
- Length: 18 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Hollywood. Saturday night. A broken taillight leads to a routine traffic stop. It shouldn’t have changed the lives of the four men involved, but it did. The Onion Field is the frighteningly true story of a fatal collision of destinies that would lead two young cops and two young robbers to a deserted field on the outskirts of Los Angeles, towards a bizarre execution and its terrible aftermath.
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Haunting
- By Avalon on 03-03-13
By: Joseph Wambaugh
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Wild Justice
- By: Phillip Margolin
- Narrated by: Anna Fields
- Length: 8 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Phillip Margolin, best selling author of The Undertaker's Widow, introduces the world to the first genuinely monstrous psychopath of the new century. Also available abridged.
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De gustibus...
- By Susan on 01-23-11
By: Phillip Margolin
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The Battered Body Beneath the Flagstones, and Other Victorian Scandals
- By: Michelle Morgan
- Narrated by: Anne Dover
- Length: 10 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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A grisly book dedicated to the crimes, perversions and outrages of Victorian England, covering high-profile offences - such as the murder of actor William Terriss, whose stabbing at the stage door of the Adelphi Theatre in 1897 filled the front pages for many weeks - as well as lesser-known transgressions that scandalised the Victorian era. The tales include murders and violent crimes but also feature scandals that merely amused the Victorians.
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Doesn’t question it’s sources enough
- By Emily Stoneking on 11-27-18
By: Michelle Morgan
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Sidney Sheldon's Angel of the Dark
- By: Sidney Sheldon, Tilly Bagshawe
- Narrated by: Michael Kramer
- Length: 10 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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It was his first big murder case - and one of the bloodiest and most violent crimes LAPD detective Danny McGuire would ever encounter. Andrew Jakes, an elderly multimillionaire art dealer, had been brutally murdered in his Hollywood home, his lifeless body tied to his naked young wife. Raped and beaten, the lovely Angela Jakes had barely survived the attack herself. Gazing into her deep, soulful eyes, Danny swore that he'd find the psychopath behind this barbarous act.
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A great book with a surprising ending
- By Norwegian kebler on 11-04-12
By: Sidney Sheldon, and others
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No Regrets: And Other True Cases
- And Other True Cases (Ann Rule's Crime Files, Book 11)
- By: Ann Rule
- Narrated by: Laural Merlington
- Length: 12 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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A ship's pilot legendary for guiding mammoth freighters through the narrows of Puget Sound, Rolf Neslund was a proud Norwegian, a ladies' man, and a beloved resident of Washington State's idyllic Lopez Island. Virtually indestructible even into his golden years, he made electrifying headlines more than once: after a ship he was helming crashed into the soaring West Seattle Bridge, causing millions in damages; and following his inexplicable disappearance at age 80. Was he a suicide, a man broken by one costly misstep? Had he run off with a lifelong love? Or did a trail of gruesome evidence lead to the home Rolf shared with his wife, Ruth?
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Finally...worth it!
- By Luv lots on 09-04-13
By: Ann Rule
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The Surgeon's Wife
- A True Story of Obsession, Rage, and Murder
- By: Kieran Crowley
- Narrated by: Danny Campbell
- Length: 14 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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In the summer of 1985, in his exclusive Upper East Side Manhattan apartment, Robert Bierenbaum, a prominent surgeon and certified genius, strangled his wife Gail to death. He then drove her body to an airstrip in Caldwell, N.J., and dumped it into the Atlantic Ocean from a single-engine private plane. The next day he reported her missing.
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Well Written
- By Susie Q on 12-21-17
By: Kieran Crowley
What listeners say about The Girls of Murder City
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Anne
- 04-21-15
Fairly well
This book, despite being slightly less enthralling then hoped for turned out to be a great insight into Chicago as a city in the late 1800's and early 1900's and a great insight Into the play that was born forth from it.
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- zoomcity
- 07-31-11
Some books should be read
This is a book that I would have liked better if I'd read it instead of listening to it. The pace is very quick and there were so many characters. If you lose your concentration at the wrong time, you'll be rewinding like I did--wait, who is she? If I'd had the photos that are in the book, it would have greatly enhanced the story. I tried to find photos online, on Mr. Perry's site, but I had to go to the library for the full experience. Not all the photos in the book are online.
Still, it's a fun read for fans of Chicago, like me. I wish there weren't two chapters on Leopold and Loeb. I know Maurine Watkins, etc., covered their story, but still...too much.
I'm glad I listened.
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9 people found this helpful
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- Alexis
- 06-10-15
Boring
This book wasn’t for you, but who do you think might enjoy it more?
Someone into Chicago's political history
Any additional comments?
I couldn't make it past the past two hours. The narrator was bland and there were way too many historical notes covering up the actual story to enjoy it.
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1 person found this helpful