According to them, she was deteriorating fast. While she may not have been legally competent, there is no doubt that Anjette understood the significance of the periodic testing to which she was subjected, and the importance of maintaining the insanity diagnosis. White's style is competent and journalistic. She sticks to the facts she has mined from the public record and from her interviews with the participants-especially, it seems, from the county jailer's wife. Unfortunately, much of the tale is told from the trial transcript and suffers from the flatness and lack of perspective that this medium inspires.
Crime stories are campfire ghost stories for grown-ups.
The Annals of Crime stories in The New Yorker often mention the ordinariness of the community, its similarity to yours. After a few of these tales, the question is not why so ordinary a person took such an extraordinary step, it's why every one of us hasn't got a body under our porch. All rights reserved.