The Girls of Murder City: Fame, Lust, and the Beautiful Killers Who Inspired Chicago - Hardcover

Perry, Douglas

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0670021970 ISBN 13: 9780670021970

Publisher: Viking Pr, 2010

Synopsis

Documents the true stories of the women whose sensational murder trials inspired the musical characters Velma Kelly and Roxie Hart, tracing the contributions of fledgling reporter Maurine Watkins against a backdrop of Chicago's Prohibition Era and Jazz Age culture.

About this title

Review:

"The recounting of the murders is gripping stuff, but where Perry shows a particularly gifted touch is in the sights and smells of a 1920s newsroom."
-The Portland Oregonian

"The Girls of Murder City spans several categories-true-crime, comedy, social history. It turns out that behind "Chicago" there was a sexy, swaggering, historical tale in no need of a soundtrack. Liked the movie. Loved the book."
-The Wall Street Journal

"Fans of true crime and popular history will enjoy the book's oversized female characters and its hardboiled background of crime and no punishment."
-The Boston Globe

"For true crime buffs, history fans or anyone interested in the roaring 1920s, this one's a sure-fire hit."
-Minneapolis Star Tribune

"Perry takes a sturdy foundation of murder, sex and Chicago's scandal-happy newspapers and builds a nonfiction marvel. His bouncy, exuberant prose perfectly complements the theatricality of the proceedings, and he deftly maneuvers away from the main story without ever losing momentum...The Girls of Murder City not only illustrates the origins of a new media monster, but reminds us that we've never been that innocent."
-BookPage

"A jazzy reprise of a time when the criminal justice system in Chicago let good- looking killers off the hook and newspapers exploited every lurid detail of dalliances turned fatal for their front pages."
-Shelf Awareness

"As entertaining as Chicago (on stage or screen), and far more informative, The Girls of Murder City recaptures a moment in which the Victorian feminine ideal was (and wasn't) giving way to the "churning change" of the flapper lifestyle - and ebulliently elucidates the emergence of the criminal as celebrity. It's this summer's "not guilty" pleasure."
-NPR, Books We Like

"Consistently entertaining...A chronicle of the wild spring and summer of 1924, when Chicago was afflicted with a seeming epidemic of female murderers."
-Kirkus Reviews

"[A] well-researched, fast-paced story behind the story."
-Booklist

From the Back Cover:

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.

About this edition

• Publisher: Viking Pr
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0670021970
• ISBN 13: 9780670021970
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 304