Title: Tedious
Product review: While I'm grateful anyone wrote a book on the topic, this is a numbing look at the "facts." It's hard to believe such a slim book on such a rich topic is this dry and uninteresting. Half the problem is that the three or four antecendents of Sondheim's Sweeney Todd are awash in weak indistinguishable characters and developments that do not benefit from close study. The details of melodramas like "The String of Pearls" et. al. just do not engage me.Haining himself is tight-lipped and emotionally indecipherable. Just try to figure out what his tone is. It's not a good late-night tale of murder, it's not a crime dossier, it's not thrilling or even disturbing. There is no dramatic arc to his writing. You get the sense that he would have preferred the whole story composed as a giant chart of figures, or that his actual task was to trick readers into belief by sinking them in made-up citations.It was an enormous effort to pick this book up after each pause, and continue.
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