The Terrible Axe-Man of New Orleans

August 2, 2010
Having provided many fascinating accounts of gruesome true crime in his excellent A Treasury of Victorian Murder series, Rick Geary skips ahead in time to the days of WWI and chronicles the unsolved rash of axe murders committed by the titular killer. As the Jazz Age dawned in rollicking New Orleans, an unknown assailant targeted immigrants, mostly of Italian origin, broke into their homes and brutally assaulted them, resulting in grievous injury and several corpses. Clues are sparse; the police are baffled; and the general populace is thrown into a vortex of paranoia. But what was the Axe-Man's motive? The answer to that question will likely never be revealed, but Geary presents all of this with his signature appealing art style and expected well-researched text, including a fun and evocative history of New Orleans from its founding through 1918. The result will appeal to true crime buffs and armchair detectives as well as Geary's already loyal audience.

October 15, 2010
Geary continues his portrayals of historical murder cases with this depiction of a series of slayings that occurred in New Orleans in 191819, when a half-dozen victims, mostly Italian grocers and their families, were killed in their homes with their own axes. After setting the scene with a brief history of the Crescent City, Geary chronicles the murder spree in a straightforward, documentary-style fashionalmost entirely eschewing dialogue in word balloons in favor of lengthy captionsthat desensationalizes the potentially lurid material. His painstaking research comes into play not only with his meticulous re-creation of the individual crimes and the citys panicked reaction but in the visual depiction of the periods cultural trappings, from clothing styles to architectural details. Gearys archly antiquated drawing style is ideally suited for bringing bygone eras to vivid, convincing life. The murder spree was never solved, although a coda posits a possible culprit. Gearys exacting, historically accurate approach makes thisas well as his other nonfiction worksa natural for true-crime fans as well as comics lovers.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)