Death of an Angel: The Inside Story of How Justice Prevailed in the San Francisco Dog-Mauling Case

I just finished reading Death of an Angel by Joseph Harrington. I was most impressed with the clarity and compassion of Mr. Harrington's writing. I have read various true crime books,and found many of them to be simply pages of facts and no meaningful theme. Mr. Harrington presents a compassionate look into the lives of those involved in this tragedy while skillfully weaving the important facts into the story. He took a complex puzzle and put it together perfectly! I highly recommend reading this book. It's one you won't put down until you have you have read the last word on the last page.

I have read so-called true crime since the classic "In Cold Blood," but even Truman Capote and, later, Norman Mailer, in "The Executioner's Song," failed to bootstrap the genre out of gore as its main attraction. (The rest of the practitioners follow a well-worn formula as interesting as a Danielle Steele soap.) Now along comes this book, Death of an Angel. Is it really true crime? Hey! It's about a notorious crime, but one in which the judge overruled the jury and let the perps off. What it's really about, and why everyone's talking about it, is that it gets into police work and under the carpet of the DA's office in a way that even "Law & Order" doesn't do. OK, the formulaic Date, Time, Place at the beginning of each chapter and episode seems like a cop-out -- pardon the expression -- but in this cop-heavy report full of all sorts of twists and turns it turns out to be a pleasant guide to events. This is a thoughtful read, so unusual in any crime book. In fact, I quickly forgot about the crime in following the fast-paced action of police procedural. The all-too-human reactions to this hideous event come through, but not garishly. "Death of an Angel" has so manyn things going for it I wouldn't be surprised if it found a dozen different audiences. It's a book I will keep around.