Review: O'Brien, Blood Runs Green

[truepenny]

Blood Runs Green: The Murder That Transfixed Gilded Age Chicago by Gillian O'Brien

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This is a well-written and interesting book about the murder of Dr. P. H. Cronin, yet another Crime of the Century that no one's ever heard of. Cronin's murder is inextricably bound up in the affairs of the Clan na Gael, so I learned a great deal about Irish Republicanism in Gilded Age Chicago. (I already knew about Gilded Age corruption, but this did certainly provide a number of new examples.) O'Brien is very good at examining and explaining ramifications, both in the causes of Cronin's murder and in the consequences, and she keeps track the whole time of how the Chicago newspapers both reported the news and sometimes created the news they were reporting.



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