Reviews for To Account for Murder

The average rating for To Account for Murder based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2017-06-24 00:00:00 Jeremy Stegall Entertaining and enlightening. As a man lay dying, he feels the need to tell his child the story of his life. There is some sort of difficult relationship between the two, but the father persists in unraveling the past. The father is Charlie, a veteran of WWII where he lost an arm. On returning to Lansing, he meets a nurse, a married one. They fall in love. Her husband is a state senator caught up in a graft investigation (This is real history). Charlie takes his dead body out to the corn field and shoots him in the face. Then he goes and applies for his old job at the prosecutor's office for an alibi. Next thing he knows he is part of the special prosecutors team and the are investigating the murder as part of a conspiracy to prevent the dead man from testifying. This works for him as it obscures his role in the murder. The ending is a great surprise. Touching story and interesting fictionalized look at real corruption in Michigan in the 1940s. THis includes the murder of a real state senator that is unsolved, but suspected to be done by the Purple Gang. Highly recommend.

Review # 2 was written on 2010-10-08 00:00:00 Andy Williams William C. Whitbeck's novel, To Account for Murder, recounts far more than just a simple murder. Frankie's father, the legendary Charles Cahill, is dying and insists on telling one last tale before the end, a Rubik's cube of a tale where every angle is a different color and every detail needs to shift before it finds its place. The elder Cahill left his arm on the battlefield in World War II. Afterwards he tried to pick up his life and left a dead senator in a field in Michigan. Old friends and enemies and a brother gather round. Old vultures seek fame and fortune from the investigation while Cahill seeks survival and anonymity. The story unfolds like a 1940's nourish gangland thriller, with political powerbrokers aiming for some combination of the common good and their own personal greed. But that's just when the Rubik's cube turns one way. In another direction, there's the strained relationship between Frankie and Cahill, Frankie ever more reluctant to hear the tale; Cahill ever more determined to live to tell. But turn again, and Cahill's love for the senator's wife brings curious rays of hope, despair, affection, protection and betrayal, each view revealing another twist and another question on the trail. Author William C. Whitbeck is Chief Judge of the Michigan Court of Appeals. He paints the corrupt legal and political scene of 1940's Michigan with a deft hand. But it's the scenes set outside of court, the anguish of love and guilt, of violence, affection, and despair, that raise the story beyond mere courtroom drama. Some relationships fall apart with loss; others separate for a while and then rejoin. But there's always the danger a relationships will never find its missing truth, like an arm buried long ago in France. Can such associations survive and thrive as if the limb were never missing, never there? Whitbeck's novel accounts for the murder of a senator, for murdered relationships and dreams, and for survival in a story, that asks what would you do to save the one you loved. Then the author masterfully saves the story's best till last. With thanks to the Permanent Press for letting me read a pre-release copy.