Richard Lindberg

Sometimes a two for one deal just means more stuff you have to figure out how to deal with.

This is the story of two awful people, Belle Gunness and Johann Hoch, who had very little in common except being, well, awful, and living at about the same time in the same part of the world. Both killed a lot of people, but by very different means. And one was caught and executed, while the other escaped during her lifetime, though she died, by a fire that might have been arson, while still a little short of fifty.

Johann Hoch was the one who got caught. He wooed and won many women with money, and dumped them -- sometimes by abandoning them, often by killing them. Either way, he made off with the cash. It almost seems like it was a game to him -- until he was caught and paid the price of crime.

Belle Gunness, by contrast, offered unattached men with cash a "business opportunity" -- the chance to move to her farm and help her improve it until it became a source of a lot of money. It's amazing how many men she lured, considering that she mostly looked for Norwegians with money and few outside attachments.

Oversimplifying a little bit, author Lindberg alternates chapters between Hoch and Gunness. He seems to be trying to draw contrasts, but it didn't work for me. It just meant that, whenever things got interesting, we'd go off on a sidetrack. And, perhaps, that we'd forgot the exact details of what was going on by the time the story resumed. Better, I think, to tell Hoch's and Gunness's stories separately, with the attempts at linking confined to compare-and-contrast sections at the beginning and the end.

I can't really judge the accuracy of the account of Hoch; I have no other sources. I have read other sources about Gunness, and would have to rate this reasonably good without being great. Lindberg has the basic story right, and he includes few of the wild and crazy stories told about Gunness. So he fulfills the basic requirement of non-fiction: That it be non-fiction. (Not every author about Gunness meets this criterion.) On the other hand, in cases where there are two differing accounts of what happened (e.g. as regards body counts), he often tends to stress the more dramatic one. And he probably doesn't document enough to justify his choices. When I was documenting an old song about Gunness (which is why I bought the book), I was willing to cite Lindberg, but I cited him rather less than my other references.

On the positive side, the book is not overly long, and only half of it is about Gunness. It's not a bad place to start reading about her story; once you've done that, you can decide whether you want to go on to other books on the topic. And you get a half a book on Hoch as a special bonus with your purchase.… (more)

This book might as well have mentioned H.H. Holmes in the title too, since there's substantial coverage of his life and crimes in the story. I'm actually a bit troubled by what Mr. Lindberg has to say about Holmes, since a lot of it contradicts what I've read in the other two books I've read about him, Devil in the White City and Depraved. Is Lindberg making much out of nothing? Is he inaccurate or were the other authors wrong? Contradicting sources always bother me.

Regards Hoch and Gunness, their stories are decently enough told, and as far as I know this is the only modern full-length book about the undeservedly obscure Hoch. It's got value for that all by itself. But I wish Lindberg had put in more about the "is the burned decapitated corpse really Belle Gunness" controversy, and perhaps his own opinion.… (more)