Duel with the Devil: Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr and America's First Murder Mystery -Paul Collins
Duel with the Devil: The True Story of How Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr Teamed Up to Take on America's First Sensational Murder Mystery - Paul Collins
Non-Fiction
Pages: 288
The discovery of Elma Sands' body in a Manhattan well in December 1799 marked the start of perhaps the first murder-mystery in American history. The unsolved murder of a young, attractive Quaker girl; the new adversarial trial system, with its introduction of cross-examination and a real role for the defence lawyer; the recent invention of court transcription allowing a full and detailed account to be published; and the presence together at the defence table of two heavyweights of the era, Revolutionary veterans and political enemies, Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr - all of these combined to create the first true-crime 'sensation' in American history.
Most true-crime histories favour sensationalism, overplaying the material for the sake of a headline - and this case is no different. To be honest, as the title of the book demonstrates, without the presence of Hamilton and Burr this case would attract very little historical attention. The fact that these two fierce rivals, later to come together in a fatal duel in which Hamilton was killed, served together in defence of the accused, Levi Weeks, isn't even all that remarkable - as Paul Collins points out, New York was a small city, both Hamilton and Burr were well known figures and quite frequently served on the same side in legal cases.
I did enjoy this book, and I rattled through it fairly quickly - it's not a long book, after all, and the case itself was hardly complex. It doesn't go into any real depth concerning the historical context of New York, America, Hamilton or Burr, and there's very little real exploration of the latter two as individuals. This is a pot-boiler kind of true crime history - no real depth or substance, just a bit of sensationalised fluff.
Non-Fiction
Pages: 288
The discovery of Elma Sands' body in a Manhattan well in December 1799 marked the start of perhaps the first murder-mystery in American history. The unsolved murder of a young, attractive Quaker girl; the new adversarial trial system, with its introduction of cross-examination and a real role for the defence lawyer; the recent invention of court transcription allowing a full and detailed account to be published; and the presence together at the defence table of two heavyweights of the era, Revolutionary veterans and political enemies, Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr - all of these combined to create the first true-crime 'sensation' in American history.
Most true-crime histories favour sensationalism, overplaying the material for the sake of a headline - and this case is no different. To be honest, as the title of the book demonstrates, without the presence of Hamilton and Burr this case would attract very little historical attention. The fact that these two fierce rivals, later to come together in a fatal duel in which Hamilton was killed, served together in defence of the accused, Levi Weeks, isn't even all that remarkable - as Paul Collins points out, New York was a small city, both Hamilton and Burr were well known figures and quite frequently served on the same side in legal cases.
I did enjoy this book, and I rattled through it fairly quickly - it's not a long book, after all, and the case itself was hardly complex. It doesn't go into any real depth concerning the historical context of New York, America, Hamilton or Burr, and there's very little real exploration of the latter two as individuals. This is a pot-boiler kind of true crime history - no real depth or substance, just a bit of sensationalised fluff.