You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
None
None
Barbara Graham might have been a diabolical dame in a hard-boiled detective story--beautiful, sexy, and deadly. Charged alongside two male friends in the murder of an elderly widow during a botched robbery attempt, "Bloody Babs" became the third woman executed in California--after a 1953 trial that played out before standing-room-only crowds captured the imaginations of journalists, filmmakers, and death penalty opponents. Why, Kathleen A. Cairns asks, of all the capital cases in the twentieth century, did Graham's have such political resonance and staying power? Leaving aside the question of guilt or innocence--debated to this day--Cairns examines how Graham's case became a touchstone in th...