True Crime Ink - True Crime Book Review

TRUE CRIME INK
TRUE CRIME BOOK REVIEW

This update's page has been written by guest reviewer
Art Montague. Mr. Montague is the author of
Meyer Lansky: The Shadowy Exploits of New York's
Master Manipulator and Crime Boss Killings:
The Castellammarese War (Altitude Publishing 2005).
Both are available at online bookstores.

BLOOD AND FIRE:
The Duke of Windsor And the Strange Murder of Sir Harry Oakes
by
John Marquis
(Published 2005 by Lmh Publishing,
Price 29.95, 252 pp, hardcover)

A read of this book confirms that unsolved celebrity murders are not the sole domain of
Dominick Dunne. Granted, however, its author, John Marquis, had more to work with than
Dunne on his best case: the turmoil of World War II, money laundering, British royalty,
colonial power, obstruction of justice, and, at its center, the brutal murder of the
British Empire's richest man -- all this in a subtropical paradise.

It was a dark and stormy night (really) in 1943 when Harry Oakes was viciously slain in
his Nassau bedroom. Oakes, a crusty prospector, had made his fortune in northern
Ontario's gold fields. How he ended up in the Bahamas is its own story. Once there, Oakes
(Sir Harry, by this time), having risen to peerage in the fashion of media mogul Conrad Black)
became a business associate and friend of H.G. Christie, a real estate developer whose
surname in that country is today a household word. Christie was Oakes' house guest on
that fateful night. His only house guest and an avowed sound sleeper.

Marquis doesn't dwell on Christie. Rather, he focuses on the Duke of Windsor, the
abdicated King of England, whom Winston Churchill had shuffled off to the
governorship of the Bahamas, a move not at all to the Duke's liking. An avowed
fascist with public ties to the Nazis, the Duke was a man with more than one hidden agenda.

Marquis makes no accusations. In an ordered objective fashion, he lays out facts (and fictions),
including new information supporting previous allegations and rumors. As more closed files are
made public -- British and American -- the intrigue will unravel, and in time, by the process of
elimination, the probable murderer will stand alone. Still, as Marquis concedes, the protagonists
have succumbed to age: no noose will ever tighten around a murderer's neck.

Blood and Fire is perhaps the most revealing book written to date about the Oakes murder.
Expect more.

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Have you read "Blood and Fire"? What did you think? Email
stringer@truecrimeink.com

Also, any suggestions on titles to review or submissions themselves
please e-mail to:
stringer@truecrimeink.com

Please note: Books reviewed MUST fall under the true crime genre,
no mysteries here.

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Previous Book Reviews

Gangster City by Patrick Downey

Chicago Outfit by John Binder

Born to Steal by Gary Weiss

Nasty Business by Peter Paradis

Heist! The Loomis Fargo Theft by Jeff Diamant

Into the Mirror by Norman Mailer and Lawrence Schiller

A Death In Texas by Dina Temple-Raston

Bin Laden by Adam Robinson

Without a Trace by Greg Aunapu and Susan Billig

Killing Pablo by Mark Bowden

The Great Olympic Swindle by Andrew Jennings

The Adversary by Emmanuel Carrere