Killer Colt

August 2, 2010
Noted historical true-crime expert Schechter (The Devil’s Gentleman) traces the divergent paths of the Colt brothers in a saga that falls short of the author’s usual high standards. Samuel Colt, born to a prosperous Connecticut family in 1814, was fascinated by weaponry from an early age and was determined to make a mark in the field. His older brother, John, drifted, until finally he settled in Manhattan as an accountant. Sam, who allegedly whittled his prototype of a revolving firearm while at sea, received foreign patents though American success was slower. But his life was shattered when, on September 24, 1841, John was arrested for the murder of Samuel Adams, whose decomposing body was found stuffed into a box in the hold of a ship bound for New Orleans. In a high-profile trial—witnesses testified that the financially pressed John bludgeoned Adams over a debt—John was convicted and sentences to hang, but in 1842 he was found in his cell with a knife in his chest. Despite the lively material and fascinating characters, Schechter fails to adequately explore the tragic irony of the situation wherein one brother revolutionizes a handheld killing machine and the other becomes a killer. 7 b&w illus.

September 15, 2010

The crime of the 19th century took place late one afternoon in New York City. At a time when murders were gruesomely reported in the newspapers, this case took precedence over all others. The reader is drawn into the early days of forensic science and detective work as the 1842 John Colt-Samuel Adams murder case is investigated and brought to trial. Period notables Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune, and authors Edgar Allan Poe and Herman Melville, both of whom wrote short stories based on certain aspects of the crime, become a part of the legacy of this notorious case. The defendant's younger brother, Samuel Colt, inventor and patent holder of the revolver later made famous by the Texas Rangers in the Mexican American War, is called as a witness. As the story unfolds and a bid for a new trial is refused by the New York Supreme Court, the reader becomes well acquainted with the criminal justice system in the days before the American Civil War. VERDICT Recommended for American history buffs with an interest in true crime stories.--Claire Franek, MSLS, Brockport, NY

Copyright 2010 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 1, 2010

Energetic Wild West tale about two enterprising brothers whose determination to make something of themselves came to radically different ends.

Even though retailer Christopher Colt, of Hartford, Conn., enjoyed wealth and prominence in the early 1800s, his sons, Samuel and John, were determined to make their own way in a raw-edged, upwardly mobile America. Samuel, with his "unquenchable mechanical curiosity," was enchanted by the working of firearms and water mines, and by age 16 had hit upon the idea of how to create his multishot pistol, which would eventually revolutionize the killing potential in the Wild West. Meanwhile, older brother John fashioned a revolutionary accounting theory into a ponderous but hugely successful textbook,�The Science of Double Entry Book-Keeping, which "would go through no fewer than forty-five editions and earn its author a lasting place in the history books." Established in an office in lower Manhattan, John was dodging creditors when he received a visit on Sept. 17, 1841, from his publisher Samuel Adams, with whom he was in dispute about production delays. The two argued, a noise "like the clashing of foils" was heard by office neighbors and the next morning John was seen dragging a pine box down the staircase and into a hired cart. Soon enough the body of Adams was found in an awaiting ship's cargo, stripped, folded and salted; the death had resulted from a series of blows by a hatchet-hammer. Was it self-defense or premeditated murder? The newly minted "penny press" of the New York Herald�and others turned the story into sensational news (rendered by Edgar Allan Poe in "The Oblong Box"), which true-crime veteran Schechter (American Literature and Culture/Queen's Coll.; The Whole Death Catalog, 2009, etc.) records in lively, plentiful detail.

Possesses all the elements of lurid true crime and dark early American history.

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