Fiend: The Shocking True Story Of Americas Youngest Serial Killer
by Pocket

	Fiend: The Shocking True Story Of Americas Youngest Serial Killer
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Book Description

<B>A MONSTER PREYED UPON THE CHILDREN OF NINETEENTH-CENTURY BOSTON. HIS CRIMES WERE APPALLING -- AND YET HE WAS LITTLE MORE THAN A CHILD HIMSELF.</B><P>When fourteen-year-old Jesse Pomeroy was arrested in 1874, a nightmarish reign of terror over an unsuspecting city came to an end. "The Boston Boy Fiend" was imprisoned at last. But the complex questions sparked by his ghastly crime spree -- the hows and whys of vicious juvenile crime -- were as relevant in the so-called Age of Innocence as they are today.<P>Jesse Pomeroy was outwardly repellent in appearance, with a gruesome "dead" eye; inside, he was deformed beyond imagining. A sexual sadist of disturbing precocity, he satisfied his atrocious appetites by abducting and torturing his child victims. But soon, the teenager's bloodlust gave way to another obsession: murder.<P>Harold Schechter, whose true-crime masterpieces are "well-documented nightmares for anyone who dares to look" (<I>Peoria Journal Star</I>), brings his acclaimed mix of page-turning storytelling, brilliant insight, and fascinating historical documentation to <I>Fiend</I> -- an unforgettable account from the annals of American crime.

Reader Reviews

Schechter does a great job of presenting the facts about the life and crimes of Jesse Pomeroy. He makes it clear that sociopathic adolescents aren't a modern phenomenon, however much we might want to blame violent movies and video games for producing them. His style is excellent for this sort of material, as he is neither sensationalistic nor shy about including some fairly graphic factual details. Occasionally he seems to wander into facts about contemporary events that bear little or no relation to the main story, but as they are interesting facts, this isn't a problem.