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Everybody has heard of Charles Manson, the man who killed the
sixties. His murder of actress Sharon Tate is the main thing
people know about him, but if you didn’t live through
his crimes (as I didn’t) you might not know much more.
Here is a compelling portrait of a killer, and of the extraordinary
era that produced him.
I am not normally a reader of true crime books, but this one
hooked me in from the first page. The author manages to instill
a sense of foreboding from descriptions of even his earliest
days, as the product of a dysfunctional family turns to crime
in his teens and goes on from there. There are interviews
with his family and cellmates which help form a picture of
the man, but more than this Mr. Guinn has put Manson squarely
in the center of his portrait of the sixties and shown how
he could thrive. This was the era of free love, Vietnam, flower
power, great music and civil unrest; a time when people were
turning their backs on the past and trying to create something
exciting and new. All this background is well described, and
helps to show how people were duped by Manson and how his
bizarre personal philosophy was spawned. It is not a quick
read nor by any means a comfortable one, but the author has
a great page-turning style that kept me reading to see where
it would all go. If you enjoy reading crime fiction and want
to read something equally exciting about a real killer then
give this one a try.
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