Because Metro Magazine
and WRAL-TV’s coverage area overlap, readers here will likely already be
familiar with the story behind Deadly
Dose: The Untold Story of a Homicide Investigator’s Crusade for Truth and
Justice and the book’s author, WRAL’s Amanda Lamb.
Last year, Lamb published her first book, Smotherhood: Wickedly Funny Confessions from
the Early Years, but this new offering is no laughing matter. For Deadly
Dose, Lamb sat down with Raleigh homicide investigator Chris Morgan and
discussed the case of Eric Miller, the medical researcher who died from arsenic
administered systematically by his wife Ann. The Millers’ story was covered
widely nationally — including on the CBS news show 48 Hours — and most people
in North Carolina know the gist of the story, just as most of us know about
some of the state’s other famed arsenic poisoners: Velma Barfield, Blanche
Taylor Moore and Pamela Sanders Williams Lanier, the last woman to be convicted
of this specific crime until Miller’s case.
But as that long title promises, Lamb strives to offer the
“untold story” here, and her conversation with Morgan takes readers
behind-the-scenes of the Major Crimes Task Force and day-to-day police work
that amassed a mountain of circumstantial evidence. There is also detail about
the bureaucracy — both within the department and between the police,
prosecutors, medical examiners and others — and interactions with the media.
Especially revealing here is a phone conversation between Morgan and defense
attorney Rick Gammon — a phone call that ultimately led to the well-known NC
Supreme Court hearing about whether or not Gammon could breach attorney-client
privilege over a dead man’s secrets.
Deadly Dose also
takes us into the mind of Morgan, a man driven to discover the truth and to
find justice. As he remarks at one point: “There has to be an advocate, there
has to be somebody looking out for the dead. They can’t speak for themselves
and their families often are ill-equipped and unable to speak effectively for
them.” As a veteran policeman, Morgan knows murder too well, and after his
first glimpse of Ann Miller in the interrogation room on the night of the
murder, Dec. 2, 2000, he got “that funny little feeling” in the back of his
mind. Even though the case wasn’t technically his at that point, his interest
and determination quickly turned into involvement. Interviews with friends and
family were just the beginning of a case that would eventually find Morgan
shadowing Ann after she moved to Wilmington, stealing her garbage and crouching
for hours in an oleander bush outside of her lover’s home. A crusade indeed —
and that’s hardly the end of the story.
Equally compelling is Morgan’s involvement with the families
of the victims — grieving with them, feeling responsible to them — and his
complex relationship with the victims themselves, even if he didn’t know them
in life. Lamb points out that Morgan’s approach is to “inhale the small details
of their lives that made them into the people they were before they were
killed.” Through Morgan’s efforts, a portrait of Eric and Ann Miller emerges:
where each of them had been born, their family histories, their romance,
marriage and first foray into parenthood — a brief one for Eric — and then the
secret life behind that façade.
But if Deadly Dose
has any serious flaws, it may well be connected with that very process — how
the book remains largely embedded in Morgan’s point-of-view. As WRAL’s crime
beat reporter, Lamb herself could likely stand as an expert on the case, and
she writes here with authority. But though she pulls from e-mails, transcripts
of phone calls, court transcripts and other similar sources, Lamb leans most
heavily on Morgan for his accounts of interviews, interrogations, meetings and
more — an account that is, no matter how affable and engaging, also inevitably
one-sided. The best true crime books — and I’m thinking here of classics like In Cold Blood or Beverly Lowry’s Crossed Over: A Murder, A Memoir —
succeed best because of the multiplicity of voices and perspectives. At times,
I kept wanting to hear at least a little bit of the story directly from
Assistant District Attorney Tom Ford, for example, or from medical examiner Dr.
Thomas Clark, men who were at odds with one another and the police. Clark
particularly comes across as contradictory in his two scenes — a contradiction
that may confuse readers just as it confused me.
Despite the limited perspective, however, Deadly Dose makes good on its goals.
Readers particularly interested in this case — or generally interested in the
complicated interrelationships among the police, the justice system and the
media — will find their time more than amply rewarded here. And for an even
more up-close-and-personal look at the case, be sure and catch Lamb at various
bookstores throughout the region in upcoming weeks. The book’s launch party
will take place at Raleigh’s Quail Ridge Books on Tuesday evening, June 3, with
Morgan himself on-hand to discuss the case and answer questions. Subsequent
events include Tuesday evening, June 10, at Durham’s Regulator Bookshop (also
with Morgan); Tuesday evening, June 17, at Barnes & Noble in Cary; and next
month, on Tuesday evening, July 22, at Barnes & Noble in Wilmington.
SHORT TRIPS SAVE GAS
Summer travel season is here, but is there plenty of gas (or
money in the wallet) to take those trips?
A new guidebook from John F. Blair, Publisher offers some
alternatives. Presented as a partnership effort from the North Carolina
Department of Cultural Resources, the North Carolina Cooperative Extension and
the North Carolina Arts Council, HomegrownHandmade: Art Roads and Farm Trails
offers short driving tours through the Piedmont and Eastern North Carolina with
a focus on “arts and agriculture,” which allows exposure to “art galleries,
festivals, state historic sites, horse farms, produce stands and you-pick
farming operations, parks and preserves, and locally owned restaurants and
picturesque bed-and-breakfast inns.” The book adheres to some pretty strict
guidelines on those latter entries. For a restaurant to be included in the
book, they have to meet at least five items on a list of criteria that includes
local art on the walls, live music, locally grown produce, indigenous recipes
or architectural significance.
Since my own travels take me down to Carteret County, I
focused my attention to the listings there. Beaufort’s entries include some
well-known spots such as the North Carolina Maritime Museum, Clawson’s and the
Beaufort Grocery Company, but also some information on smaller venues including
the Down East Gallery, Handscapes, Mattie King Davis Art Gallery and Miss
Marie’s Gallery.
Carteret County’s listings are in a section called “Coastal
Treasure Chest,” and the book throughout proves a treasure chest of ideas for
people on the go — but not wanting to go too far.
NEW AND NOTEWORTHY
Among the many new books from authors this month, the debut
novel from Nina de Gramont stands out. De Gramont has already established her
credentials with short fiction — her collection Of Cats and Men was a Book
Sense selection and an award winner from the New England Booksellers
Association — and her new novel, Gossip of the Starlings, promises to up the
ante even more. Inspired by a true story, the book traces the friendship of two
girls at an elite New England boarding school who lead one another into more
trouble than they bargained for. De Gramont will be reading from the book on
Thursday evening, June 19, at McIntrye’s Books at Fearrington Village.
AREA BOOK EVENTS
• Nicholas Dawidoff, editor of the Library of America’s
Baseball: A Literary Anthology, and author of the memoir, The Crowd Sounds
Happy: A Story of Love, Madness and Baseball, on Monday evening, June 2, at
Durham’s Regulator Bookshop.
• Ann Wicker, editor of Making Notes: Music of the
Carolinas, on Thursday evening, June 5, at Raleigh’s Quail Ridge Books.
• Sara Addison Allen, author of The Sugar Queen, on Thursday
evening, June 5, at McIntyre’s Books at Fearrington Village; and on Friday
afternoon, June 6, at the Country Bookshop in Southern Pines.
• Lawyer-turned-novelist Lauch Magruder, author of Without
Regard, on Friday afternoon, June 6, at McIntrye’s.
• Wayne Caldwell, author of Cataloochee, on Tuesday evening,
June 10, at McIntyre’s.
• Poets Alex Grant and Roy Jacobstein on Saturday morning,
June 7, at McIntyre’s.
• Diane Chamberlain, author of Before the Storm, on Tuesday
evening, June 10, at Quail Ridge Books.
• Cary author Carolyn Booth, author of A Chosen Few, on
Wednesday evening, June 11, at Quail Ridge Books; and on Wednesday evening,
June 18, at Barnes & Noble in Cary.
• Nancy Horan, author of Loving Frank, on Thursday evening,
June 12, at Quail Ridge Books.
• Karen Abbott, author of Sin in the Second City, on
Thursday evening, June 12, at McIntyre’s.
• NCSU professor Jeremy Packer, author of Mobility Without
Mayhem: Safety, Cars and Citizenship, on Thursday evening, June 12, at the
Regulator Bookshop.
• Andre Dubus III, author of The Garden of Last Days, on
Friday afternoon, June 13, at McIntyre’s, and later that evening at Quail Ridge
Books.
• Jeffery Deaver, author of The Broken Window, on Friday
evening, June 13, at Barnes & Noble, New Hope Commons, Durham; and on
Monday evening, June 23, at Quail Ridge Books.
• Tobacco historian Billy Yeargin, author of North Carolina
Tobacco: A History and Remembering North Carolina Tobacco, on Saturday evening,
June 14, at the Regulator Bookshop.
• W. Hodding Carter, author of Off the Deep End, on Monday
evening, June 16, at Quail Ridge Books.
• Christopher Cooper and H. Gibbs Knotts, editors of The New
Politics of North Carolina, along with contributor Ferrel Guillory, on Tuesday
evening, June 17, at Quail Ridge Books.
• Alan Furst, author of Spies of Warsaw, on Thursday
evening, June 19, at Quail Ridge Books.
• Dawn Shamp, author of On Account of Conspicuous Women, on
Thursday afternoon, June 19, at the Country Bookshop; and on Saturday morning,
June 28, at McIntyre’s.
• Alexandra Sokoloff, author of The Harrowing, on Monday
evening, June 23, at Barnes & Noble in Cary.
• Dale Volberg Reed and John Shelton Reed, editors of
Cornbread Nation: The Best of Southern Food Writing, along with contributors
Marcie Ferris and Michael McFee, on Wednesday evening, June 25, at Quail Ridge
Books.
• Novelist Carrie Brown, author of The Rope Walk, on
Thursday evening, June 26, at Quail Ridge Books.
• Valerie Raleigh Yow, author of Betty Smith: Life of the
Author of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, on Thursday afternoon, June 26, at the
Country Bookshop.
• Academy Award-winning actor Gene Hackman and Daniel
Lenihan, authors of Escape from Andersonville, on Friday evening, June 27, at
Quail Ridge Books.