June 3, 1991
In this reprise for readers not yet sated with the newsmaking case, Sharkey overdramatizes the already sensational 1989 Boston killing in which Charles Stuart fatally shot his pregnant wife Carol, accused a black man, one Willie Bennett, of the crime, thereby causing racial furor, then later jumped to his death from a bridge. In a book that offers no fresh insights--none of the family members or other principals seem to have been interviewed--the character and motivations of those touched by the tragedy remain without definition. Finesse is not Sharkey's metier, as witness his recreation of the murderer's supposed thoughts: he ``felt the cold hand of desperation on his broad shoulder.'' And one wonders if it doesn't dehumanize Carol Stuart's life to state, as the author ( Death Sentence ) grandiloquently would have it, that the case is a metaphor for an era. Photos not seen by PW . First serial to Penthouse.