Death in a Fish Pond: A Perfect Husband, a Perfect  Marriage, a Perfect Murder?
Unlike many true crime tales that are dashed off to coincide with the latest lurid headlines, this book is cohesive and much less sensational than its counterparts. The actual crime-doting husband David Mead kills his wife and makes it look like an accident in order to collect insurance money and marry another-does resemble the more infamous Scott Peterson case, but the similarities end there. Lemcke was the Salt Lake City prosecutor in Mead's murder trial, and his legal background shows in every meticulous detail. The book is more a courtroom procedural than a crime drama (think Perry Mason, not Sam Spade), and while Lemcke's inclusion of minutiae can be mind-numbing, he comes off as someone who is honest as the day is long, with a real concern for the parties involved. After a long phone call with a potential witness, Lemcke writes, "I lay there, spent from sharing real pain, thinking less of myself for failing to recognize someone else's humanity." In the end, readers won't feel as if they've learned much about Mead's motivations, but this in itself is oddly refreshing. Rather than conjure up false platitudes or pop psychology sound bites, Lemcke, when asked by a reporter how Mead was able to fool so many women, simply replies, "I guess there are folks out there that can just charm the pantyhose off an octopus. I don't know, man. I'm not one of them."Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.