Deranged

Rating:
Summary: The Stuff of Nightmares
Review: This is a fascinating and often bloodchilling account of Albert Fish, whose perversions and brutal murder of a little girl shocked America in the early '30s. I would recommend it to any reader with an interest in notorious criminal cases or abnormal psychology. But like many books in this genre, there are no reference notes and scant information about the sources. I can believe that Schechter did his research in the newspaper files and court documents, and he was able to interview Fish's defense lawyer, an elderly but still alert man at the time of writing. But I can't accept the author's novelistic liberties in describing gestures, vocal inflections, some of the dialogue he puts in people's mouths, or the way he occasionally enters into a person's "private" thoughts. He couldn't possibly verify these things, and sections of the book read like a piece of slick pulp fiction. Among the photographs are an image of Grace Budd's skull that Fish had dumped behind a stone wall and a night-time view of the secluded cottage where he murdered the girl -- these are just as disturbing as Schechter's lurid prose. (Though the author fails to acknowledge it, this same material was covered in Mel Heimer's "The Cannibal," which was published twenty years before his own book.)

Rating:
Summary: Awesome
Review: This is one of the best books I ever read at first it started out talking about kids I never heard of but then later on in the book I understood. I read other peoples reviews about this book and saw that they said it was one of the worst books they ever read!! What a lye I have never heard of such a perverted and "Deranged" human being if u can even call him that. I have never read a book about any serial killer before all though my brother has read me alot about them i saw a picture of "The Moon Maniac" in his book and thought he was sick but I didnt know the half of it if u ever buy a book about any serial killer make it the sickest of them all....

Rating:
Summary: The Boogey Man Is Going to Get You If You Don't Watch Out
Review: When Schechter noted that at the time of writing Albert Fish's defense attorney was alive at 89 I realized that this story did not happen all that long ago as historical crimes run. It is possible that people who were victimized by Fish as children would be still living although Schechter doesn't deal with this one way or the other.

However, the world of Albert Fish, of trusting parents sending their daughter off with fatherly strangers, seems so distant that it might as well have been set on another world.

Albert Fish is the stuff of nightmares and Schechter does an excellent job of recreating the time in which he lived and preyed on young children. While the author does take literary license at time with recreating certain scenes he also makes no pretense to be writing anything other than a work of popular nonfiction. This is the only book length work about Fish and as such belongs on the shelf on all who are interested in historical murderers.

Anyway if you want to read about someone who clearly met the definition of the title and who is one of the less well known monsters who populated the world prior to WW II then this is your book.