Deranged

Deranged
Harold Schechter

So many true crime stories shine a spotlight on the sheer incompetence of police investigations, it’s nice to read one where they actually did a good job. The work that led to the capture of psycho child-killer Albert Fish, six years after his abduction and murder of ten-year-old Grace Budd, is a case in point. A walking anthology of mental disorders, Fish was considered insane by the jurors who nevertheless sentenced him to the electric chair. As usual, Schechter has done a good job investigating this Depression-era story and tells it with novelistic dash.