"The Murder of the Century: The Gilded Age Crime That Scandalized a City & Sparked the Tabloid Wars" by Paul Collins
Jeff Glor talks to Paul Collins about "Murder of the Century."
Jeff Glor: What inspired you to write the book?
Paul Collins: I stumbled across an 1897 New York Times article about murder clues discovered in Queens, like a derby hat with a bullet hole in it - and an accusation that "yellow newspapers" had planted these clues. The clues were indeed fake, but the murder was real: a body had been scattered all over New York City with no apparent identity or motive behind the crime. People were wondering if it was the Mafia, Spanish spies, even if Jack the Ripper had moved to Manhattan. The case was the beginning of the first real newspaper war, between Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst, and I was fascinated by how modern crime reporting was basically created on the spot that summer.
JG: What surprised you the most during the writing process?
PC: Realizing that for all the upheavals of technology, just how little has truly changed in the media. Hearst and Pulitzer were really the first media barons, and the stuff they pioneered--the 24/7 news cycle, the one-upsmanship for a scoop, the trial reporting and man-on-the-street interviews--they're all still with us. If you took an ace New York World reporter, shaved off his handlebar moustache and gave him an iPhone, he'd fit in at any newsroom in the country today. Actually, since facial hair's made a comeback, he could even keep the moustache.
JG: What would you be doing if you weren't a writer?
PC: Teaching--and if I wasn't doing that, I'd work in a rare book shop. I actually had a brief spell in one in the Welsh "book town" of Hay-on-Wyes; it's a village of 1,500 with 30 bookstores. Even though I'm immersed in digital archive research, I still love the feel of old books. You never know what you'll come across in a rare book shop, and even the heft and yellowing paper are reassuring: they're like comfort food.
JG: What else are you reading right now?
PC: I'm starting Tom Bissell's memoir "The Father of All Things: A Marine, His Son, and the Legacy of Vietnam," which I picked up immediately after finishing his terrific "Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter." And I'm piling through this vast online archive of trial transcripts, The Proceedings of the Old Bailey, 1674-1913. It's amazing stuff for a crime writer, because you really hear how an amazing cross-section of people--from shopkeepers and maids to pickpockets--actually talked back then.
JG: What's next for you?
PC: Crown just picked up my next book, "Duel With The Devil," which I'm now in the middle of writing. It's about the Levi Weeks murder trial of 1800, when Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr teamed up to try to keep a young carpenter from going to the scaffold. That Hamilton and Burr got together to take on a murder mystery remains mind-boggling to me; whenever I mention it to people, they say - "Oh, so your next one's fiction." And I reply--no, it's history--this really happened!
For more on "Murder of the Century," visit the Random House website.
