Perfection to a Fault
A Small Murder In Ossipee, New Hampshire, 1916
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- $8.99
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
"Petrie vividly re-creates the circumstances and aftermath of an early 20th-century murder in this true-crime book. Exhaustive detail and flawless re-creations make for real suspense in this nonfiction tale."—Kirkus Reviews.
This book is the non-fiction account of the events which encompassed a murder and trial at the turn of the century in Ossipee, New Hampshire. When Florence Small's smoldering body rose to the surface of the basement water, local folks immediately suspected her husband of the crime. Frederick Small was an outsider, a Boston man, who had moved to Ossipee Lake to semi-retire. There was a deep distrust of "city fellas up there behind the Ossipees," in 1916 and perhaps this suspicion was warranted. But how could Frederick have been responsible for a murder and a fire that happened 7 hours after he had left for Boston on a business trip? The sensational trial that followed was unlike any previously experienced in Carroll County. And although everybody from the Boston area to Portland, Maine, had an opinion, nobody anticipated the decision the jury would reach.
The Manchester Leader and Evening Union newspaper wrote in anticipation of a verdict, "If the state has proved its case, it has developed a new type of New Hampshire criminal. It has brought forth a cool, daring, mechanical and chemical genius, a man who scorned the ordinary forms of murder but brought to the mountains of this quiet village a science which would baffle Sherlock Holmes. The jury of his peers will decide whether Frederick Small is that man or the normal individual who has been made a victim of circumstances and is being tried for a crime of which he had no knowledge."
The unrest on the ill-fated property remained even in 1956, when Anna Foley's unsuspecting son and daughter-in-law felt the effects of the events of 1916 one August night while vacationing on the property.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Children's book author Petrie's crisp, quick-moving true crime account details the gruesome 1916 murder of Florence Arlene Small at the house she shared with her abusive husband, Frederick Small, in Carroll County, N.H. The victim's body was found shot, bludgeoned, and strangled in shallow basement water after a fire burned down the primary structure of the Smalls' Ossipee Lake cottage. Petrie starts the book in 1955 with her own link to the case (as a child she spent a night in the restored cottage where the murder took place), then goes back to Florence's last day of life. She also examines the court record to provide a diligent account of the trial to convict Frederick for premeditated murder. Evidence against Frederick mounted: his manipulative past; the inventory of what he took with him to Boston after the murder, including a traveling satchel with the house deed; pieces of a timed incendiary device; proof of a recent purchase of kerosene; and a new life insurance policy on Florence. Petrie (Something's Tugging on My Claw!) expertly puts details into historical context and annotates each chapter with newspaper and court documentation. Written in 2000 but even more intriguing as the 100th anniversary of the crime approaches, this thorough account will appeal to fans of true crime, especially those familiar with New England. (BookLife)