Brief Book Review: *A Cold-Blooded Business* by Marek Fuchs

• A Cold-Blooded Business: Adultery, Murder, and a Killer’s Path from the Bible Belt to the Boardroom by Marek Fuchs
• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing (March 10, 2009)
• ISBN-13: 978-1602392540

Back-of-the-book blurb: In 1959, Olathe, Kansas was made famous by the murder of the Clutter family and Truman Capote’s ground-breaking book on the crime, In Cold Blood. But fewer know that Olathe achieved notoriety again in 1982, when a member of Olathe’s growing Evangelical Christian population, a gentle man named David Harmon, was bludgeoned to death while sleeping—the force of the blows crushing his face beyond recognition.

Suspicion quickly fell on David’s wife, Melinda, and his best friend, Mark, student body president of the local bible college. However, the long arms of the church defended the two and no charges were pressed. The case was declared as dead as David Harmon.

Two decades later, two Olathe police officers revived the cold case making startling revelations that reopened old wounds and chasms within the Olathe community—revelations that rocked not only Olathe, but also the two well-healed towns in which Melinda and Mark resided. David’s former wife and friend were now living separate, successful, law-abiding lives. Melinda lived in suburban Ohio, a devoted wife and mother of two. Mark had become a Harvard MBA, a high-paid corporate mover, a family man, and a respected community member in a wealthy suburb of New York City. Some twenty years after the brutal murder, each received the dreaded knock of justice at the door.

She Is Too Fond of Books’ review: Note:  This is one of a number of “Brief” reviews I’ll be posting in the next few weeks.  I have a stack of about 15 books that I’ve read, but not yet shared my thoughts on.  I plan to use the general format of my reviews (publisher information – including synopsis, cover picture, etc.), but will include “Brief” in the post title as a disclaimer that these are quick and dirty – what I might tell a friend if I ran into her at the grocery store and she asked “What are you reading these days?”

Well, friend … I recently read Marek Fuchs A Cold-Blooded Business, a true crime thriller about murders that took place in 1982, in Olathe, Kansas.  Although much evidence pointed to David Harmon’s wife – Melinda – and a friend, the killer(s) weren’t found, and the case went cold … for two decades.

I was drawn to the book for two reasons.  First was the clever title, which bring to mind Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, also about murder in Olathe.

Second, the author seemed to have a hot line to information – he covered the case for three years in the New York Times.  Mark Mangelsdorf – the friend of the family who was earlier suspected, exonerated, then finally convicted about ten years ago – lived in Westchester County, New York, the same county as the author, who contributed to the Westchester, Metro, and National sections of the paper.  I really expected Fuchs to have his finger on the pulse of the story.

What I found instead struck me as a re-telling of newspaper accounts – a lot of facts in the narrative, but little analysis.  Fuchs’ comments border on sarcasm at times, as in this section toward the beginning of the book, where he looked at the initial questioning of Melinda Harmon and Mark Mangelsdorf by Joseph Pruett:

During their initial questioning, Mark and Melinda both told Pruett that while they were alone in the Harmon house, while David was off playing floor hockey with the Jakabosky brothers, they had taken separate naps.

Separate naps?

An attractive young man, the runaway hit of his college campus, and an equally attractive young woman, alone, while her chubby husband was off playing a boy’s game.  Pruett wasn’t born yesterday.

In the end (and I did read to the end!), I’m not sure of Fuchs motives for writing.  Did he want to package his research from work on those Times articles as start-to-finish crime story?  Was he trying to expose holes in the original investigation?  Was the agenda to reflect on the “growing Evangelical Christian population,” of which the three main players were a part, and their willingness to pin the crime on three mysterious (and nonexistent) black assailants?  I’m not sure.