SEX, DRUGS, AND INSURANCE FRAUD.

In the middle 1970s, as part of the pushing of various envelopes that avatars of the Consciousness Revolution would have us believe were necessary freedom from hang-ups, a massage parlor industry emerged in Madison, Wisconsin.  These businesses managed to stay just on the legal side of the vice ordinances, although their purposes were something other than loosening tight muscles.

The business came apart in the aftermath of a trial of one of the higher-achieving masseuses on two counts of murder, both involving clients who sought companions in their loneliness in something other than chess, both somewhat older than the masseuse, both mysteriously dead, until an investigation of shipping records discovered orders for cyanide, and a second look at tissues held in the crime lab uncovered concentrations of cyanide.

And thus we have Winter of Frozen Dreams, a book of more than passing interest in the family, as my sister lived near the murder suspect's apartment, and the protagonists occasionally frequented a bar downstairs from my apartment.  Book Review N^o. 29 will suggest that what is omitted from the story might be more instructive than what is present.  The author, working from police records, conversations with those witnesses as are willing to talk, and his imagination, provides readers with much by way of titillation, and little in the way of hard analysis.

Perhaps behavioral science has learned something in the intervening years.  The masseuse, who was convicted of one murder and acquitted of the other, has made only one statement to the press since her conviction.  "I did not commit the crime of which I was accused and of which I was convicted."  That leaves the other murder, Watson.  Her history is intriguing ... she earned excellent marks in science in high school and university, yet found her way into the low end of the sex industry.   There have been a few developments in understanding high-functioning Aspies and savants and distinguishing them, or not, from geniuses, since 1981.  That's the unanswered question over the winters of frozen dreams that have followed.

(Cross-posted to 50 Book Challenge.)