Thanks for the What Happened to Paula review, Dan! I have been wondering about that one. There is a fine line to walk with personal remembrances from the author, and suppositions about what "might" have happened in the absence of actual information.
Sometimes that "maybe they saw one of these hit movies of the year" stuff works for me to set the scene and create a feeling for the time & place, and sometimes it's just ridiculous. I'll probably still give What Happened to Paula a try based on this review, though!
I’m reading “Paula” right now, so this review is quite timely. Yes, lots of the author’s connections to the case are stretched very thin, but I am attracted to the overt feminism in this work just as I was fascinated with the abortion issue. When I was young, we lived next to a doctor and his wife (she was his nurse; that was how they met - a classic trope). He was a family physician who also beat his wife. When she filed a complaint with police, he had her sent to a mental institution until - we all assumed - she promised to behave. He also performed illegal abortions. In his home. At night. With his wife assisting. I could only think that at least he was a licensed professional who knew what he was doing and had access to appropriate tools and medications. The women who came to him were in good hands, although he charged A LOT. That meant he was only helping white women of fairly affluent families. He was clearly no saint. People, there was definitely plenty of subtext to the 1960s.
Thinking about the motiveless (for lack of a better term) villain is interesting, because it's a very pre-modern way of telling stories - there's a bad woman who lives down the lane and abducts naughty children; there's a bad king who lets his people suffer. And true crime often feels pulled between very old storytelling forms and beats (their roles as cautionary tales and morality plays) that we possibly don't get in so many other forms these days, or being very new to the point of post-modernism ("this isn't a whodunnit it's a meditation on the nature of truth"). Right down to the formats, true crime slips quickly if not easily into new technological shapes. So yeah, not everything needs a motive to be effective, or to have integrity, as a story, but we should think about why that is. My gut take on Dr Death is that it's a story about what happens when chaos disrupts the rules we have to keep us safe, and chaos isn't one for motives.
The person that killed Paula Oberbroeckling most likely also killed Maureen Farley 13 months later.
Google search with Paula Oberbroeckling and Maureen Farley names listed in the search. That killer
is different than what the police have listed. The DNA evidence found on Maureen Farley's dead body might have been washed away by the flood of 2008. The flood was eight feet high at Cedar Rapids police station where this DNA evidence was being stored.
Thanks for the What Happened to Paula review, Dan! I have been wondering about that one. There is a fine line to walk with personal remembrances from the author, and suppositions about what "might" have happened in the absence of actual information.
Sometimes that "maybe they saw one of these hit movies of the year" stuff works for me to set the scene and create a feeling for the time & place, and sometimes it's just ridiculous. I'll probably still give What Happened to Paula a try based on this review, though!
I’m reading “Paula” right now, so this review is quite timely. Yes, lots of the author’s connections to the case are stretched very thin, but I am attracted to the overt feminism in this work just as I was fascinated with the abortion issue. When I was young, we lived next to a doctor and his wife (she was his nurse; that was how they met - a classic trope). He was a family physician who also beat his wife. When she filed a complaint with police, he had her sent to a mental institution until - we all assumed - she promised to behave. He also performed illegal abortions. In his home. At night. With his wife assisting. I could only think that at least he was a licensed professional who knew what he was doing and had access to appropriate tools and medications. The women who came to him were in good hands, although he charged A LOT. That meant he was only helping white women of fairly affluent families. He was clearly no saint. People, there was definitely plenty of subtext to the 1960s.
Thinking about the motiveless (for lack of a better term) villain is interesting, because it's a very pre-modern way of telling stories - there's a bad woman who lives down the lane and abducts naughty children; there's a bad king who lets his people suffer. And true crime often feels pulled between very old storytelling forms and beats (their roles as cautionary tales and morality plays) that we possibly don't get in so many other forms these days, or being very new to the point of post-modernism ("this isn't a whodunnit it's a meditation on the nature of truth"). Right down to the formats, true crime slips quickly if not easily into new technological shapes. So yeah, not everything needs a motive to be effective, or to have integrity, as a story, but we should think about why that is. My gut take on Dr Death is that it's a story about what happens when chaos disrupts the rules we have to keep us safe, and chaos isn't one for motives.
Mystery Readers Comments
The person that killed Paula Oberbroeckling most likely also killed Maureen Farley 13 months later.
Google search with Paula Oberbroeckling and Maureen Farley names listed in the search. That killer
is different than what the police have listed. The DNA evidence found on Maureen Farley's dead body might have been washed away by the flood of 2008. The flood was eight feet high at Cedar Rapids police station where this DNA evidence was being stored.