Neil MacGregor, the British art historian, may not have been the first author to categorize a subject into 100 objects, but there is no doubt his A History of the World in 100 Objects, published in 2010, set off an avalanche of similar volumes, ranging in subject from India to samurai to U-boats at war. So Harold Schechter is relying on a time-tested formula to write a history of crime in 100 objects, and it is a measure of his research and gift for storytelling that the reader not only learns new details about familiar murders but about murders that are just as gruesome but lost to time. Chain saws, action figures, boats, candy wrappers, typewriters: all figure as reminders of hideous crimes. You can see one of his most famous objects, the bullet-riddled 1934 Ford Fordor Deluxe sedan in which Bonnie and Clyde met their end, by visiting Primm Valley Resort and Casino, in Las Vegas. The book not only saves you the trip but gives you 99 other reasons to be an armchair detective.
Oh gosh, another book about Greta Garbo, the Swedish movie star who spent more years as an elusive presence on Manhattan’s streets than she ever spent on the screen, before dying in Manhattan, in 1990, at age 84. What makes Lois W. Banner’s book different and highly worthwhile is her focus not so much on the films of Greta Gustafsson (a Swedish director persuaded her to change her last name to Garbo before she went to Hollywood, in 1925) as on the person herself: her insecurities, her religiosity, and her persistent health problems (perhaps even including gonorrhea). She captures well the milieu in which Garbo became a star, but, more to the point, places her in the context of what beauty meant in the era in which Garbo thrived.
