Word: sordidity
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...darlings of the press these days, and authors find these gruesome murderers equally attractive. Time for a new novel? Can't think of a topic? Serial killers provide guaranteed drama, trauma and public interest. Whoever says that there are no positive sides to America's love affair with the sordid obviously has never spoken to a writer of trashy thrillers...
...McCreary's second book, The Minus Man, capitalizes on this interest in a rather touching way. Considering its subject matter, this book is surprisingly civilized. The Minus Man, a first-person account, contains lots of sordid thoughts but very little gory detail. For example, the killer uses poison, a distinctly sanitary method of murder...
...thing, these killers usually get caught without a coast-to-coast manhunt. Being inexperienced criminals, most end up tripping over their own stories. Then they spill all the sordid details to a tabloid or television program for enormous amounts of money...
Figueroa's sordid account runs as follows. Beginning in kindergarten at St. Anthony's church in Kailua, Hawaii, he was continually molested by the parish priest. When the boy was in his teens, the priest died, but Ferrario, his successor, continued the sex abuse for years, paying Figueroa for odd jobs in return. Ferrario also aided Figueroa in quitting high school just before graduation and joining the gay community in San Francisco. Figueroa alleges that the sexual entanglement continued even after Ferrario became a bishop, with trysts at church residences in Honolulu and Menlo Park, Calif. Figueroa's lawyers claim...
...died, and Teddy found he was on his own and began to cross over from the powerful myth of his family into real time, which is intolerant of the bright and ideal. The fracture set a pattern of sharp contradiction: the "brief shining moment" would give way to long, sordid aftermaths. Greek tragedy ("the curse of the Kennedys") would degenerate into sleazy checkout-counter revelations ("Jack and Bobby and Marilyn"). The serious lawmaker in Ted Kennedy would turn now and then into a drunken, overage, frat-house boor, the statesman into a party animal, the romance of the Kennedys into...