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Darrow's client is a serial-killing woman who has murdered several adults and a large number of children, including at least three of her own. And here is where the plot seems a bit askew. As in real life, Darrow is a passionate death-penalty opponent. If he loses, his thoroughly guilty client goes to the electric chair. Just deserts aside, the novel has clip-clopped along too jocularly for too many chapters for this to be an acceptable outcome. Well, can the child killer go free? Perish forbid. Therefore...
...breakthrough came in 1995 with the near simultaneous releases of The Usual Suspects, which won him an Oscar for his performance as the wily master criminal Keyser Soze, and Seven, in which he had an unbilled turn as the gruesome serial killer who cuts off Gwyneth Paltrow's head. "Whether a character does good or bad things doesn't interest me," he insists. "It's whether there are ambiguities." Later this year he will appear as the Savannah, Ga., antiques dealer accused of murder in Clint Eastwood's adaptation of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil...
...responds to crime quality as well as quantity. "It's the large body counts," he says, "it's the fact that more strangers are [dying] on a random basis; it's 12-year-old boys killing for a pair of sneakers...nasty, brutal crimes, acts of sexual sadism, stalking, serial murders, vengeful employees who come back to the workplace." Concludes Levin: "People are desperate for solutions...
...brilliant internal guardian" that can be honed to a fine point. But there is also practical advice on a variety of crimes on Levin's list, and some that might as well be: assault by a stranger, stalking, rampages by co-employees and demon baby sitters. (A truly spectacular serial-killer case seems thrown in for seasoning.) Some of the counsel is self-evident: Beware of strange men offering unwanted favors or fake solidarity. Learn to say, "I said NO!" But a four-part test for assessing the possibility of violence is less obvious and more useful. De Becker...
Back in the U.S., Elaine Shannon monitored the FBI manhunt, and James Willwerth and Laird Harrison retraced the steps of the only suspect, alleged serial killer Andrew Cunanan, while Julie Grace began the sad task of tracking down the families of other victims...