Summary of Harold Schechter's Ripped from the Headlines!

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 The book was made into a movie in 1958, and it was groundbreaking for its frankness on sexual matters at the time. It was seen as a testament to the unwritten law, which stated that a husband who found another man in bed with his wife was justified in killing him. But the law was a myth. #2 Anatomy of a Murder is a film noir, and it is largely because of its atmospheric, black-and-white cinematography. Laura, the vixen-like beauty in the habit of dolling herself up, is an archetypal femme fatale. #3 The book is a thinly disguised version of an actual, highly sensational case in Michigan. In July 1960, exactly one year after the movie’s release, both Voelker’s publisher and Preminger’s studio were hit with a $9 million libel suit filed by a Michigan nurse, Mrs. Hazel A. Wheeler, the widow of a man named Maurice Mike Chenoweth. #4 In 1952, a newly married couple, the Petersons, visited the Lumberjack Tavern in Big Bay. Coleman, a first lieutenant in the US Army, was napping in their trailer when his wife, Charlotte, was raped by the bar's owner, Mike Chenoweth.