Paul Collins, The Murder of the Century
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A bizarre murder reinvents American journalism
When Martin Thorn murdered William Guldensuppe as part of a love triangle in turn-of-the-century America, he probably didn’t imagine that he was initiating a new era of tabloid journalism. But as Paul Collins tells in The Murder of the Century, that’s just what happened. The story energized William Randolph Hearst’s news empire, giving the mogul the impetus he needed to finally smash Joseph Pulitzer’s competing paper, in the process initiating the 24-hour news cycle. Researching this book Collins consulted thousands of newspaper articles, and it shows — he tells this story with novelistic detail and tight plotting. He also offers a delightful fondness for strange details of the era, everything from the flourishing market in cadavers to the rats packed in the courtroom’s vents and something called “Telephone Headache Tablets.” Though Collins is far from the first to narrate the Guldensuppe tale — even A.J. Liebling had a go at it under the grizzly headline “The Case of the Scattered Dutchman” — he’s the first to make it into a book, and arguably the first to see the greater role the case played in bringing about an era of narrative-based journalism that follows a story for weeks and months. As befits a book, Collins gives a great sense of the Gilded Age in which the crime took place, building up characters and making for a captivating story. In the end, The Murder of the Century shows that, in the right hands, old stories can be made new.
