Mark Horvath's Reviews > Echoes in the Darkness

This tale of true crime from my home state of Pennsylvania is one that has twists and turns beyond the publish date of this book. Wambaugh himself had a role to play in those moments, and while they can offer skew points to the book itself, its not the purpose of this review to assess those things. Instead, we look at the prose.

To his credit, Joseph Wambaugh has a gift for film-noir style, gritty metaphor that wouldn't feel uncomfortable in a 1950s movie. His descriptors are vivid and lively, his phrasing sometimes downright lyrical. True crime, though, sometimes has a very human and dull side to it. Trying to truly offer a profile and characterization of an Ezra Pound obsessed schoolteacher named William Bradford comes with major shortcomings. We get a paranoid, paradox of a man that somehow led double and triple lives with multiple women, grooming and manipulating them into loyal subjects of his kingdom of eventual rot.

One such lover would become the deceased, Susan Reinhart. She and her two children, murdered. This after she took a major insurance policy out and placed her lover as beneficiary.

But it couldn't be him, Bradford would say. For a year, he would warn his disciples of a former administrator, Jay Smith. A perverted lunatic "hit man" with a love of making people "disappear." The paranoia and hyperbole would only cause the eventual crime to become the homicide with the longest collective police time clocked on a case in Pennsylvania history.

While Wambaugh does his best to make this an end-to-end thriller like his original novels, Echoes in the Darkness can majorly lag until the crime itself is committed. The exposition and framework was well done to the point of being overdone. Many times I internally shouted, "Yes, Joe, I get the point!"

This isn't to say it fully hinders the book. Once we get deeper into the investigation and eventual trials, Echoes in the Darkness becomes a hard to put down page-turner that can lead to late night reading sessions.

I do recommend this book, but I also recommend reading it first before looking up any information about the aftermath. I also understand that this request only will amplify curiosity as to what I mean. If you have no plan to read this, seek the info. Be my guest. But if this novel at all interests you, read it on its own merit before getting any other data. Go in virgin to the Susan Reinhart case. I've lived in PA my entire life, and never heard of it. Having been born in 1984 and on the other side of the state (in Uniontown, which gets a brief shout-out!) no doubt helped my ignorance. Being virgin to the case only piqued me further, and is how I recommend it be read.