Deranged Book

Can a book be terrible? A book can be bad, it can be boring, it can be poorly written, but I like to think that just by being a book it's exempt from being thought of as "terrible". Terrible like Ivan. Terrible like children who are two. Terrible like some of the things Ann Coulter and Rick Santorum say.

Sadly, Deranged: The Shocking True Story of America's Most Fiendish Killer, is, despite it's eye-grabbing National Enquireresque title, pretty much a terrible book.

And worse, I didn't find it terrible because of the gruesome subject matter, but because it's not only poorly written and it's not only boring, but it reads like a shortcut-seeking, high school student's book report. And by shortcut-seeking, I mean the type of book report that was written in a hurry by someone not being familiar with the book and relying only on the synopsis on the book's dust jacket.

The subject of the book, Albert Fish, was a serial killer who committed crimes too horrible for me to mention here. He was born in 1870 to a supposedly distinguished family that suffered from histories of mental illness. After his father died when he was five-years-old, Fish was sent to an orphanage and it was there where the seeds that would shape his future obsessions and behaviors were planted. That is about the extent of the man's biography shared in the book. Thorough, huh? More biographical information is given about a German serial killer, Fritz Haarmann, than about Albert Fish.

The rest of the book is made up of boring, long-winded accounts of Fish's two final crimes, the city-wide manhunt, and his subsequent arrest and conviction and it reads like everything was simply lifted out of old newspapers. And the narrative - it just goes on and on and on and...

Let me save you some time. Fish was tried and despite jurors saying they believed he was insane, they also believed he should die for his crimes so they found him sane and he was put to death in the electic chair in the Sing Sing Correctional Facility. Too bad he wasn't holding this book when they pulled the switch.

You guessed it: I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone.