Starkweather : Inside the Mind of a Teenage Killer

Starkweather: Inside the Mind of a Teenage Killer, by William Allen. In January 1958, a nineteen-year-old Nebraskan, Charles Raymond Starkweather, accompanied and assisted by his fourteen-year-old girlfriend, Caril Ann Fugate, murdered ten people in eight days. William Allen has produced a meticulously researched documentary… Aesthetes of mayhem will appreciate Allen’s nose for nuance. Allen’s book undoubtedly is the most thoroughly researched and best-written account of Starkweather and his short-lived reign of terror. William Allen’s literary career spans close to four decades. A contemporary of Starkweather and Fugate, he is the leading expert on the Starkweather spree and the only person with first-hand knowledge of most of the characters central to the 1958 carnage. Allen currently is a Professor Emeritus at Ohio State University, where he introduced literary nonfiction to that school’s distinguished creative writing program. He is the author of six books, including the Pulitzer Prize-nominated Fire in the Birdbath and Other Disturbances, as well as numerous essays for Esquire, the New York Times, and the Atlantic Monthly.