The Lindbergh Child

Starred review from August 18, 2008
Following his multivolume, nonfiction Treasury of Victorian Murder
, Geary moves into the 20th century with a study of the 1932 kidnap-killing of celebrity aviator Charles A. Lindbergh's infant son. Not knowing their son was already dead, the little boy's parents negotiated for months with the kidnapper, while a swarm of quirky characters in search of money or glory rushed to “help.” This macabre carnival could give a writer excuses for burlesque or melodrama, but Geary prefers to hold his subject at arm's length to examine it carefully. He delineates the large cast clearly while also exploring the case's presumably reliable physical evidence, and his crisp pen and ink style cleverly emphasizes the period snapshot appearance of places and people, especially the enigmatic Bruno Richard Hauptmann, who was convicted and eventually executed for the crime. There are reasons to doubt at least whether Hauptmann was the only criminal, but Geary refuses to conjecture beyond the evidence, despite his bemused understanding of how many of the people involved in the case lost their self-control. This thoughtful retelling of one of the century's most notorious crimes deserves several readings.

November 1, 2008
Gr 10 Up-Geary brings his excellent and attractive pen-and-ink style to this fascinating account of an infamous case of the early 1930s. In March of 1932, the child of famed aviator Charles Lindbergh was kidnapped from his parents' home in Hopewell, NJ, and the family began to receive a series of ransom notes. However, the subsequent investigation turned up very few plausible leads, and when the child's remains were found, the case became one of murder. Although the suspected killer was arrested, tried, and sentenced to death, many questions about his guiltand about the nature of the crime itselfremain to this day. Using well-researched text and appealing art, Geary expertly recounts the crime's setting, the colorful characters involved (on both sides of the law), the communication between the kidnapper and Lindbergh, and the evidence both for and against Richard Hauptmann, the murder suspect. A good example of the origins of modern forensics, crime-scene investigation, and celebrity hysteria, this work is an excellent choice for most collections."Dave Inabnitt, Brooklyn Public Library, NY"

Copyright 2008 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 1, 2008
The creator of the Treasury of Victorian Murder series couldnt have selected a more complicated subject to kick off the Treasury of XXth Century Murder than the 1932 kidnapping of the 19-month-old son of aviators Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh from Lucky Lindys new house in the country, away, the father had hoped, from hounding reporters. One of the original media feeding frenzies ensued, not least because newspapers were the vehicles for communications between the putative culprit and Lindbergh. A childs badly decomposed body, found two months after the kidnapping, was identified from clothing as the Lindbergh child, and eventually a German immigrant was executed for the crime. But the official investigation was fraught with irregularities, fraud, and suicide; the prosecutions evidence was completely circumstantial; and speculation about who really dunnit persists to this day. Showing his customary droll mastery of the short, telling stroke and laconically precise sentence, Geary portends that hell render the rest of the twentieth centurys most celebrated enormities as handsomely as he did the nineteenths.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2008, American Library Association.)