Genealogy of a Murder

Starred review from March 20, 2023
Journalist Belkin (Life’s Work) goes deep on a tragic 1960 shooting in this outstanding true crime saga. From primary sources including diaries, letters, autobiographies, and her own interviews, Belkin retraces the steps that led ex-convict Joseph DeSalvo to kill Stamford, Conn., beat cop David Troy during a bar holdup. At the time, DeSalvo was on parole from an armed robbery sentence, during which he became friendly with a doctor named Alvin Tarlov, who conducted experiments on inmates where DeSalvo was housed. Tarlov had faith that DeSalvo was rehabilitated and supported his release, paving the way for his deadly confrontation with Troy. After meticulously detailing the crime, Belkin flashes back to trace several generations of the Troy, Tarlov, and DeSalvo families, each of whom emigrated from Europe starting in 1906. She invites readers to wonder whether, had their ancestors taken different paths, the trio might have wound up in a less deadly place. Belkin’s judicious research parlays into an engrossing, expansive narrative that reads like a real-life Greek tragedy. It will spur contemplation and debate in an audience far beyond just true crime diehards.

April 1, 2023
The entangled history of the people, incidents, and systems that led to the murder of a police officer in 1960. On July 7, 1960, a convict out on parole killed David Troy in a holdup gone wrong. Belkin, a former New York Times correspondent and author of Show Me a Hero and Life's Work, begins her story decades before, tracing the twists and turns of four families to the moment they entwined in that tragic event. From the years before the Great Depression through the following decades of war and economic growth, we come to know not just Troy and his killer, Joseph DeSalvo, but also their ancestors and Dr. Alvin Tarlov, whose support led to DeSalvo's being granted a second chance. Obsessed with "how any of us become who we are," Belkin inspects the inflection points that push an individual--and their family tree--into one plot rather than another. As generational stories overlap, the author masterfully builds hand-wringing anticipation of the fateful evening despite having already revealed its shape. Wading into the details of characters' personal dispositions, successes and failures, and attempts to correct course, she creates a rich backdrop against which to probe the implications of punishment, rehabilitation, and recidivism in America's system of imprisonment and parole. She deftly manages the particularities of a wide catalog of individuals and their historical and cultural contexts, teasing out pertinent insights into how America treats its prisoners; the tenuous position of parolees and the system surrounding them; and the messy connections among fate, dispositions, and outcomes. If never decidedly answering some of her questions about the case, Belkin creates an impressive work of in-depth narrative journalism that artfully conveys the countless paths a life can follow and exposes the instinctual human desire for alternative endings. An absorbing, thought-provoking inquiry into what it means to change and defy the odds.

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May 1, 2023
Journalist Belkin offers a historical example of the "Butterfly Effect"--the concept that the smallest of individual actions can impact an unknowable number of others--in analyzing a tragedy with intergenerational effects that occurred through a combination of personal responsibility, small decisions, and random circumstances. The author's stepfather is one of three men whose lives fatefully intersected, resulting in the murder of a police officer on July 7, 1960. Belkin reviews the history of each family involved, beginning with their immigration at the turn of the century. She augments collected data with an interleaving narrative to compare how each family's motivations, socioeconomic status, cultural differences, and adaptability determined each man's role on that critical day. During her research, Belkin also uncovered contradictory objectives and missteps leading to an ill-conceived parole system. Readers will be grateful for the prefacing family trees to disentangle an intricate web of relationships. True-crime aficionados will savor the detailed depiction of the crime and references to the notorious Leopold and Loeb murder case that tangentially contributed to its outcome.

COPYRIGHT(2023) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.