Delaware Behaving Badly
First State, True Crimes
Delaware Behaving Badly is a fresh compendium of essays about a state’s true crime cases.
Dave Tabler’s piquing regional true crime book sums up Delaware’s headline-stealing cases.
Treating particular crimes as “windows into the First State’s evolving identity,” the book is an informative overview of case highlights and crime’s impact on Delaware’s communities and lawmaking. The chapters are brief and matter-of-fact, raising compelling questions that are not always answered. Still, the book’s curation is thoughtful, encompassing cases including murders, bigamy, an art heist, and oyster piracy.
The collection begins with seventeenth-century witchcraft laws that uncovered fraudsters and became excuses for racism. Black citizens, for example, were maligned as voodoo practitioners. Elsewhere, amid lingering revolutionary conflict, a British officer was charged with murder, leading to divided public opinion on subjects of mercy and justice. Greed is spotlighted in the case of a bold woman who planned to kidnap free men and sell them into slavery. On these and other topics, the book handles social issues related to freedom, prejudice, and profit with care. Delaware’s geographical position between the northern colonies and the southern slaveholding states is gestured toward too.
Some essays draw sharp connections between specific crimes and broader social climates at a given time. These include a snapshot account of a former railroad worker whose misguided sabotage against the railways resulted in a manslaughter conviction, set against the backdrop of a sympathetic public whose members felt that the unfair railroad system had long mistreated its employees. Still other chapters are candid about Delaware’s imperfect relationship between criminal perpetrators and those who deliver justice, citing oversights and power struggles. One town’s acceptance of smuggling because they benefited from it, and law enforcement’s occasional complicity, resulted in little change. The book’s coverage of vice trades, the sex trade, and trafficking strikes similar notes, with “tacit police approval” leading to mixed levels of law enforcement. An exception is an essay about a rapist whose violent exploits sparked statewide reform of the prison furlough program.
The text is crisp and conservative with its details; grisly forensic information is foregone, even in its coverage of harrowing topics like maternal filicide and a pediatrician’s widespread abuses. But the chapters begin with compelling quotations from period newspapers and other sources to set the tone. Indeed, the prose is noteworthy for its balance between vivid language and factual lucidity.
Crimes that are indicative of a state’s social and civic growth are covered in Delaware Behaving Badly, a fascinating regional true crime collection.
Reviewed by
Karen Rigby
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book and paid a small fee to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. Foreword Reviews and Clarion Reviews make no guarantee that the publisher will receive a positive review. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
