Compulsion - Softcover

Levin, Meyer

4.09

1,611 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0786703199 ISBN 13: 9780786703197

Publisher: Carroll & Graf Pub, 1996

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The basis of the award-winning film starring Orson Welles, Compulsion gives a shocking fictionalized account of the Leopold-Loeb murder case--in which two young graduates of the University of Chicago kidnapped and killed a child for the intellectual challenge. "A graphic and absorbing reconstruction of an infamous crime."--Saturday Review.

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Review:

"Before, we had thought the boys could only have committed the murder under some sudden dreadful impulse. But now we learned how the deed had been marked by a long design developed in full detail. What was new to us was this entry into the dark, vast area of death as an abstraction." The mid-'20s Leopold-Loeb case, called "the crime of the century," introduced Americans to a new type of murder: two privileged college students picked a child at random and killed him without a conventional motive, simply as an intellectual experiment. Meyer Levin's 1956 novel is historical fiction in the tradition of Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy--both a compelling story and a meticulous analysis of the different psychologies of the two youths. Compulsion was called "a masterly achievement in literary craftsmanship" by Earle Stanley Gardner in the New York Times Book Review, and it inspired an award-winning film starring Orson Welles as Clarence Darrow.

About the Author:

Meyer Levin (1905 - 1981) was called by the Los Angeles Times "the most significant American Jewish writer of his time." Norman Mailer referred to him as "one of the best American writers working in the realistic tradition." Throughout his 60 years of professional work, Levin was a constant innovator, reinventing himself and stretching his literary style with remarkable versatility.

When Levin died in 1981 he left behind a remarkable and diverse body of work that not only reflected the incredible life he led but chronicled the development of the entire Jewish consciousness during the 20th century.

Marcia Clark began practicing law as a criminal defense attorney. She became a prosecutor in the L.A. District Attorney's Office in 1981, and spent ten years in the Special Trials Unit where she handled a number of high profile cases prior to the O.J. Simpson case, including the prosecution of stalker/murderer Robert Bardo, whose conviction for the murder of actress Rebecca Schaeffer resulted in legislation that offered victims better protection from stalkers as well as increased punishment for the offenders.

She has published three novels which feature Los Angeles Special Trials prosecutor Rachel Knight - Guilt by Association, Guilt by Degrees, and Killer Ambition and is currently at work on her fourth novel.

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