A Wilderness Of Error: The Trials Of Jeffrey MacDonald (2012) - Plot & Excerpts
I picked this up because I heard a radio story mention it alongside In Cold Blood as one of the best true crime books of all time. Throughout the book I kept wanting something more than it was. I wanted a meditation on truth and the nature of evidence. I wanted classic Errol Morris. That stuff peeked through at times, but for the most part this book is a detailed take down of the government's case against MacDonald, and a description of Morris's alternate theory. It was entertaining, and it definitely sounds like there's reasonable doubt about MacDonald, but I was left a little unsatisfied. This book offers an important correction to the somewhat sloppy work of journalist, Joe McGuinness, and the oblique angle by Janet Malcolm in "The Journalist and the Murderer," which I sometimes teach in my Literary Journalism class, about ethics of literary journalism. Morris offers much original documentation, and followed up with interviews of several key figures (those still alive, since the crime took place in 1970). It's not a quick read because there are long excerpts of trial testimony, interviews, etc., and lots of tables and re-creations, but if you have followed the case at all, it's fascinating, and very convincing that MacDonald did not get a fair trial and is quite probably innocent of the vicious crimes. (I hadn't really thought he was innocent because like so many people, I was influenced by the book, the t.v. drama, and media narrative painting him as an sociopathic narcissist.) Morris shows how that narrative just doesn't make sense, nor does the evidence itself point to his guilt.
What do You think about A Wilderness Of Error: The Trials Of Jeffrey MacDonald (2012)?
My first true crime book. I love the way Morris thinks. The book is just as engaging as his films.
—tiffany
It's like an Errol Morris film on paper. Loved it.
—caitlynisscool
