Summary Of Claire Mcgowan S The Vanishing Triangle

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 I grew up in Northern Ireland in the nineties, which was a time of turmoil and change. We were afraid of being shot by the soldiers who crouched in the hedgerows as we walked home, and we were afraid of being bombed by the IRA. #2 The nineties in Ireland were a time of change and struggle. People were trying to prise off the fingers of Church control, and they were struggling with their self-identification as one of the few true Catholic countries left. #3 There were a few brutal murders in Ireland during my childhood that could be linked to the later disappearances. In 1979, Phyllis Murphy, who was twenty-three, went missing from Newbridge, about thirty miles from Dublin. She was last seen walking to the bus stop wearing jeans and a winter coat, mittens. Her body was found two months later in a forest in Wicklow. #4 There were several unsolved cases in Ireland in the 1980s and 1990s, including the murders of Antoinette Smith and Jastine Valdez. The cases were all similar, with the bodies of the victims wrapped in plastic bags and dumped in bog land.

From the bestselling author of What You Did comes a true-crime investigation that cast a dark shadow over the Ireland of her childhood. Ireland in the 1990s seemed a safe place for women. With the news dominated by the Troubles, it was easy to ignore non-political murders and sexual violence, to trust that you weren't going to be dragged into the shadows and killed. But beneath the surface, a far darker reality had taken hold. Through questioning the society and circumstances that allowed eight young women to vanish without a trace―no conclusion or conviction, no resolution for their loved ones―bestselling crime novelist Claire McGowan delivers a candid investigation into the culture of secrecy, victim-blaming and shame that left these women's bodies unfound, their fates unknown, their assailants unpunished. McGowan reveals an Ireland not of leprechauns and craic but of outdated social and sexual mores, where women and their bodies were of secondary importance to perceived propriety and misguided politics--a place of well-buttoned lips and stony silence, inadequate police and paramilitary threat. Was an unknown serial killer at large or was there something even more insidious at work? In this insightful, sensitively drawn account, McGowan exposes a system that failed these eight women--and continues to fail women to this day.

One of NPR's "Books We Love" New York Times Book Review's "The Best True Crime of 2022" "Rich in historical perspective and graced by novelistic touches, grips the reader from first to last.”—Wall Street Journal A suspense filled tale of murder on the American frontier—shedding new light on a family of serial killers in Kansas, whose horrifying crimes gripped the attention of a nation still reeling from war. In 1873 the people of Labette County, Kansas made a grisly discovery. Buried by a trailside cabin beneath an orchard of young apple trees were the remains of countless bodies. Below the cabin itself was a cellar stained with blood. The Benders, the family of four who once resided on the property were nowhere to be found. The discovery sent the local community and national newspapers into a frenzy that continued for decades, sparking an epic manhunt for the Benders. The idea that a family of seemingly respectable homesteaders—one among the thousands relocating farther west in search of land and opportunity after the Civil War—were capable of operating "a human slaughter pen" appalled and fascinated the nation. But who the Benders really were, why they committed such a vicious killing spree and whether justice ever caught up to them is a mystery that remains unsolved to this day. Set against the backdrop of postbellum America, Hell’s Half-Acre explores the environment capable of allowing such horrors to take place. Drawing on extensive original archival material, Susan Jonusas introduces us to a fascinating cast of characters, many of whom have been previously missing from the story. Among them are the families of the victims, the hapless detectives who lost the trail, and the fugitives that helped the murderers escape. Hell’s Half-Acre is a journey into the turbulent heart of nineteenth century America, a place where modernity stalks across the landscape, violently displacing existing populations and building new ones. It is a world where folklore can quickly become fact and an entire family of criminals can slip through a community’s fingers, only to reappear in the most unexpected of places.

From 1950 to the present day, there have been almost 900 long-term missing people in Ireland. The equivalent of a vibrant village, all gone, vanished without a trace. Where did they go? Are they dead or still alive somewhere? How many have been murdered? How many killers have got away with their crimes? RTÉ journalist Barry Cummins has reported on the unsolved cases of Ireland's missing for decades. In this new edition of his bestselling book, he examines the latest leads and developments of Ireland's most high-profile missing cases, including the women who disappeared under eerily similar circumstances in the 1990s and whose bodies have never been found. Written with the assistance of the gardaí and the families concerned, Missing is a comprehensive and shocking account of the cases that have in turn fascinated, puzzled and horrified the Irish public. It also examines the possibility that there may be a serial killer out there who has gone to extraordinary lengths to evade justice, leaving open the possibility that they could strike again.

A CBC Books Work of Canadian Nonfiction to Watch For in Spring 2022 An Amazon Best Book of the Month: Biographies and Memoirs A Los Angeles Times Book to Add to Your Reading List in February A Seattle Times Most Anticipated Book of 2022 A Vanity Fair New Book to Read this Month A Publishers Weekly’s Top Spring 2022 History Title A Literary Hub Most Anticipated Book of 2022 A The Millions Most Anticipated Book of 2022 A Town & Country Must-Read Book of Winter 2022 A Bustle Most Anticipated Book of February 2022 A The Lineup True Crime Book to Be Excited About in 2022 A Bookpage Most Anticipated Nonfiction A Bookriot 22 Great Books to Read in 2022 A CrimeReads Most Anticipated Crime Fiction of 2022 A true-crime masterpiece, this is a story of wrongful exoneration about killer Edgar Smith and the prominent crusaders who fell prey to his charm. Having spent almost half his lifetime in California's state penitentiary system, convicted killer Edgar Smith died in obscurity in 2017 at the age of eighty-three—a miracle, really, as he was meant to be executed nearly six decades earlier. Tried and convicted in the state of New Jersey for the 1957 murder of fifteen-year-old Victoria Zielinski, Smith was once the most famous convict in America. Scoundrel tells the true, almost-too-bizarre story of a man saved from Death Row by way of an unlikely friendship—developed in nearly 2000 pages of prison correspondence—with National Review founder William F. Buckley, Jr., one of the most famous figures in the neo-conservative movement. Buckley wrote articles, fundraised and hired lawyers to fight for a new trial, eventually enlisting the help of Sophie Wilkins, a book editor with whom Smith would have a torrid epistolary affair. As a result of these friends' advocacy, Smith not only gained his freedom, he vaulted to the highest intellectual echelons as a bestselling author, an expert on prison reform, and a minor celebrity—only to fall, spectacularly, back to earth, when his murderous impulses once more prevailed. Weinman's Scoundrel is a gripping investigation into a case where crime and culture intersect, where recent memory begins to slide into history and where the darkest of violent impulses meet literary ambition, human ego and hunger for fame.

Between 1993 and 1998, six Irish women, ranging in age from eighteen to twenty eight, disappeared. The area in which these disappearances occurred became publicly referred to as 'The Vanishing Triangle'. To date, none of the missing females have ever been located. These six unsolved cases resulted in the creation of the specialist Garda task force 'Operation Trace', set up in the hope of finding a connection between the missing women. None was found. The task force investigated dozens of unsolved cases of women gone missing in Ireland. Alan Bailey served as the National Coordinator for the task force for thirteen years, and the revealing stories in Missing, Presumedall come from his personal experiences in this role. Missing, Presumed details, and reports on, the Garda investigations into the case studies of fifteen women who disappeared over a time span of twenty years. In almost half of the cases, the women's badly mutilated bodies were recovered, sometimes months later, buried in shallow graves. Each chapter focuses on one woman's story, and details the timeline of events that led to her disappearance, beginning on the day of her disappearance through to the ensuing investigation, and up to - when lucky - a conviction. These stories are haunting, terrifying, and true. 'It is now sixteen years since Trace was established. The families and friends of both the disappeared and those whose bodies were found still await closure.'

In Flesh and Blood, Sunday World Investigations Editor, Nicola Tallant looks at the rising phenomenon of murder-suicide in Ireland, at events which, while shocking in the extreme, happen in tight-knit communities, behind the closed doors of apparently loving homes. She takes us inside these houses of horror and pieces together what happened in seventeen prominent cases, including the horrific murder of four-year-old Deirdre Crowley, whose abductor father shot her dead so that her mother would never see her again; the case of Caitlin Innes, murdered after her Communion Day; the tragic McElhill children, torched to death by their own father; and the case of mother Sharon Grace who, in a state of extreme desperation, drove off a pier with her children in the car. It examines what warning signs, if any, were there before loving fathers and mothers turned killer in their own homes, and looks at the roles of the HSE, the Gardai and families and friends in the build up to these tragic events. Is it too easy to whitewash these crimes as those of the mentally ill? Or can jealousy tip the scales in an otherwise balanced mind? Are there common factors that link these cases? And what steps can be taken to ensure that warning signs are heeded in the future before tragedy strikes again?

In her debut novel, Jac Jemc explores the question, "Do we make up our stories or do they make us?"