tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post7225890091879600441..comments2024-01-28T03:56:39.351-08:00Comments on TOM CLARK: The Collecting Place (Tight Spaces) / William Bolitho: The Science of William BurkeUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-60647615163395964042017-12-26T08:19:41.685-08:002017-12-26T08:19:41.685-08:00"William Bolitho began writing his masterpiec..."William Bolitho began writing his masterpiece, Murder for Profit, in the early 1920s, when he was still recovering from wounds suffered during World War I. Bolitho’s identity, fittingly enough, is a bit mysterious: consensus has it that he was British by way of South Africa, that he married under somewhat scandalous circumstances, and that he assumed the name of a famous banker and mine mogul to raise his social station (his real name is usually given as Charles or William Ryall).<br /><br />"Whatever the case, he didn’t live long — his Great War injuries never quite left him — but he developed a reputation as a sharp-witted, intellectually curious and fearless writer, a self-made journalist who dabbled in the kind of speculative editorializing that would later characterize the New Journalists that emerged thirty years later. His other works included a revisionist take on Greek mythology, a first-person account of opium addiction, and a scathing look at the early days of Fascist Italy, but Murder for Profit, his sole dalliance with true crime, is his most lively and engaging...<br /><br />"[He] decided... to delve into the history of mercenary homicide with an eye towards writing a sort of poetic history of killing for money. His most famous assassins were Burke and Hare, the notorious body-snatchers who found a gruesomely profitable way to supply the demand of medical schools for fresh cadavers..."<br /><br />-- Leonard PierceTChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.com