Sudden Fury: A True Story of Adoption and Murder - Hardcover

Walker, Leslie

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312034369 ISBN 13: 9780312034368

Publisher: St Martins Pr, 1989

Synopsis

Details the story of Larry Swartz, an adoptee disturbed by his difficult past, telling of his killing of his often severe parents and his attorney's efforts to bring constructive change from the case

About this title

From Publishers Weekly:

In 1984, 17-year-old Larry Swartz killed his foster parents in an Annapolis, Md., suburb. One of the couple's three adopted children, he was shy and emotionally undemonstrative. His background and the circumstances leading to murder are the thrust of this searching study by Baltimore Evening Sun reporter Walker, less a true-crime re-creation than the story of a tortured being. Larry was given up by his birth mother when he was two and shunted from family to family, none of them willing to cope with his increasing insecurity and alienation. At age six, he was adopted by Bob and Kay Swartz, a model church-going Catholic couple but severe and demanding of their children, the father's temper sometimes growing into physical abuse. Larry pleaded guilty to killing them and is now in Maryland's rehabilitative program at Patuxent correctional facility. Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal:

Bob and Kay Swartz created a family by adopting three children, two of them older boys who had been in and out of foster homes for years. In 1984, one son, Larry, murdered his parents. Walker, a Baltimore reporter, shows the ensuing investigation and trial, as well as the lives of the family members before and after the crime. The focus in on Larry--his sad early childhood, his conflicts with his parents, and his lawyers' attempts to salvage what they could of his life. This could be an incisive portrayal of a family tearing apart, but the author's sympathies are too overwhelmingly with Larry. Although the parents were strict and strongly disciplined the children, they hardly appear to have been so abusive that the crime could be justified, as is hinted here. Only for large crime collections.
- Sally G. Waters, Stetson Law Lib., St. Petersburg, Fla.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: St Martins Pr
• Publication date: 1989
• ISBN 10: 0312034369
• ISBN 13: 9780312034368
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 384