At the New York Review of Books, John J. Lennon reviews Sarah Weinman’s Scoundrel, about the relationship between William F. Buckley and murderer Edgar Smith, who Buckley became convinced was innocent (he was not) and agitated to have released from prison. Smith eventually attempted another murder. “I imagine many readers will finish Scoundrel and find Buckley complicit in Ozbun’s attempted murder,” Lennon writes:
They will think the real injustice was that Smith wasn’t executed. Few will consider that Smith, who had spent nearly fifty-five years of his life in prison and, at eighty-three, had diabetes and had undergone six bypass surgeries, may not have deserved to die in one.
Lennon ends on a note that I find unconvincing—I do not think it’s wrong to tell interesting stories just because they might be politically damaging. (That said, I think he does catch a false note in the way Weinman positions herself here, commenting that her attempts to bring “her story in line with the language…