A Cold-Blooded Business: Adultery, Murder, and a Killer's Path from the Bible Belt to the Boardroom

It isn't easy to find a book you truly cannot put down. What makes this such a book is the characters who inhabit it - characters who seem like people you've met even if you are not from a small town or part of a tight-knit religious community, people you think you know but who behave so utterly outside the realm of what you expect from them. The book hints that any of us can have the impulses these characters have but still leaves us wondering to the last page what it is that makes these particular people cross the line so shockingly, so horrifically. My favorite part of the book is when the author brings himself into the action, towards the end, in a visit to the murderer's house, which he shares with his lovely, pregnant wife. He makes little reference to his own feelings about the experience, but we know what he is feeling because we have taken the ride with him to this point - a terrible, but undeniably exciting look into the lives of people we don't want to know, but can't turn away from, in the way their ordinariness blends together with whatever it is that makes them so incredibly frightening. Some may find it unsatisfying that the author does not attempt to wrap up the story with easy answers and explanations, but I believe the ambiguity is what makes the book so completely intriguing.

You can tell Marek Fuchs is a reporter by trade. His facts are presented in a logical yet tension-building order, his characters are true and reveal themselves mostly through their own words and actions, and events and circumstances are weighted appropriately to their impact on the story rather than their potential to produce book-selling blurbs. It is this professionalism that separates A Cold-Blooded Business from many other examples of the true-crime genre. There is plenty of melodrama in the story itself, and Fuchs puts it all before the reader without making you wallow in it. The Church of the Nazarene could have been depicted as a near-cult for example, but it was portrayed instead as a fundamentalist sect for Christians who don't believe you have to wear wool underwear to feel closer to God yet want the protection of a semi-closed society that holds itself just sightly holier than everybody else. The characters reflect reality, too. All three of the main players, victim David Harmon, his wife Melinda, and their eerily successful and intimate friend Mark Mangelsdorf, are real people who lean on their religion when they need it, being very careful to not look at the underpinnings of their beliefs too closely lest they learn the foundation is a bit shaky. Fuchs did an especially fine job of demonstrating how Mark turned away from the religion of the prairies to worship at the altar of the corporate boardroom with much the same calculating proficiency he used to purchase, use, and hide the murder weapon that apparently has yet to be found. I appreciate the way this story was told without the sensationalism that pervades and overwhelms most such books. At the hands of a skilled reporter like Marek Fuchs, A Cold-Blooded Business carries you through a sordid affair without making you feel like a rubber-necker sniffing around the blood stains at a highway fatality.

About 30 pages into the book it really just explodes and takes off and the pace never slows down until the last page. Although I am not an avid true mystery crime reader, this book did exactly what I was looking for--it completely engages the reader and you get quickly absorbed into the facts of the case. More importantly, I found myself getting absorbed into the personal lives of these people as I was constantly asking myself "why?" and "how?" throughout the entire book. Not merely a page-turner, although that would be enough for me, it is an insightful book with a larger message. Fuchs writes confidently and intelligently as he points you toward distrubing insights concerning human nature but he lets you "connect the dots". This scored high points for me as I don't like books that tell you how to feel or get too moralistic.

Typically, I would have little, if any, interest in a book of this nature - murder, infidelity, unpunished crime...but Fuchs gives meaning to this brutal and shocking story. Through what must have been an enormous research job, the author is able to fully develop the characters in an extremely personal manner. Allowing the reader to know these subjects so intimately makes the story unforgettable. I couldn't put the book down and ended up reading it in two sittings. What could have been a seedy local TV news story, was a riveting tale that made me question human nature.

I loved it. This true crime story is elegantly crafted and expertly told. In this moment of overcommentary, celebrity worship and cultural/economic identity crisis, it was seriously refreshing to read this crisp, startling tale of good and evil. Fuchs' voice is honest and smart. He lets the reader bear the discomfort of facing the stunningly evil behavior of apparently everyday people without wrapping it all up in a neat(false)package. I was more and more drawn in as each piece of the puzzle was set in its place and finally satisfied to see the whole thought provoking picture at the end. I hope he writes more.