Studies in Murder (1924)

By my calculations, Edmund Lester Pearson was 12 and living in Newburyport, Massachusetts, less than 100 miles away, at the time of the murders in Fall River for which Lizzie Borden was accused. The murders obviously made an impression on him. They are not only the subject of the longest and most detailed piece, "The Borden Case," in this first collection of crime accounts by the meticulous librarian, but are mentioned in the other pieces here as well—and, if I understand correctly, come up frequently in his other collections, most of which are unfortunately out of print and not readily available, and indeed were the subject once again of his last book. As with the Scotsman William Roughead, of the late 19th century, the New Englander Pearson is a gifted amateur criminologist with a knack for thoroughness, relentlessly uncovering the relevant documents, reading them closely, and then telling the tales straightforwardly and politely, arguably glossing some of the unpleasantness but never shying from communicating the realities. It's the kind of thing, bowing to tender sensibilities of the reader, that most crime journalists of the past 50 years or so don't bother with any longer—in fact, the shocking and the lurid is pretty much what they unfailingly play to. Pearson picks his cases carefully, with an eye for those that remain most mystifying, either in terms of whodunit itself or, more interestingly, in terms of the motivations that produced or could have justified them. He proceeds smartly, with a deceptively soothing, studious tone that relentlessly examines everything in reach. The Borden murders would appear to stand as Pearson's ur-example. It's not hard to see that Lizzie Borden, in her early 30s at the time, has to be considered the most likely perp, though she was acquitted by a jury and remained in Fall River until her death in her 60s. It's not even hard to see, at least on some basic level that accepts the degree of fury against one's parents in the first place, what may have motivated her. What is most unsettling, however, and what seems to affect Pearson most about it, though he never quite expresses it so explicitly, is how perfectly forces of the universe seem to align and conspire in order to make the case against her such a difficult one—all circumstantial, and thus so eternally strangely allusive and indeterminate for such a savage crime, committed on a lovely summer midday in a house full of people coming and going.

In case it's not at the library.