A True Story of Crime and Poetry

The illustrator, Landis Blair, is known
for his cross-hatched drawings.

When my coworker recommended a graphic novel entitled The Hunting Accident, I hesitated. Why would I want to read about a hunting accident? But then I read the description, saw the illustrations, and I was hooked. I breezed through half of this 437 page graphic novel in one night, and finished the rest not long after. I’ve been trying to get more coworkers to read it, and now I’m going to try to get you to read it, too.

Set mostly in Chicago during the mid-1900s, the story starts with the main character, Charlie, moving in with his father after his mother’s death. Charlie’s father, Matt, is blind and lives with his guide dog in a small apartment. Matt explains to Charlie that he lost his sight during a hunting accident. Having lived with his mother in California, transitioning to Chicago is difficult for Charlie. One of the things he gets used to is his father endlessly typing on his Braille typewriter.

When Matt’s work is transcribed into printed text he has Charlie read it aloud to check for errors. His work, it turns out, is poetry. One of the things I loved about this graphic novel was the layers of story. First, there is the relationship that forms between the father and son. Then, there is the story that’s being told through Matt’s poetry that is interspersed throughout the reality of the father and son’s day-to-day life. Lastly, there is the background story of Leopold and Loeb.

Blair's black and white illustrations
enhanced imagined parts of the story.

If you don’t know who Leopold and Loeb are, they are Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb: two wealthy young men who killed a 14 year-old boy in Chicago in 1924. They killed the boy because they believed that they were too smart to get caught. They were caught, however, and both sentenced to life in prison. The story of Leopold and Loeb is 100% true, and because it happened in Chicago the two men were larger-than-life to those who resided in the city.

It’s difficult to not tell you everything about The Hunting Accident: A True Story of Crime and Poetry. Let me say that the last page of the story shocked me (in a good way), and that if you are interested in illustrations, poetry, Dante, mafia-wannabes, or complicated family relationships, then you should read it. And if you don’t know anything about Leopold and Loeb, here's some information on that, too.

The Hunting Accident: A True Story of Crime and Poetry 
By David L. Carlson, Illustrated by Landis Blair 
It was a hunting accident that much Charlie is sure of. That's how his father, Matt Rizzo--a gentle intellectual who writes epic poems in Braille--had lost his vision. It's not until Charlie's troubled teenage years, when he's facing time for his petty crimes, that he learns the truth. Matt Rizzo was blinded by a shotgun blast to the face but it was while participating in an armed robbery. Newly blind and without hope, Matt began his bleak new life at Stateville Prison. In this unlikely place, Matt's life and very soul were saved by one of America's most notorious killers, Nathan Leopold Jr., of the infamous Leopold and Loeb.

For the Thrill of It: Leopold, Loeb, and the Murder that Shocked Chicago 
By Simon Baatz 
It was a crime that shocked the nation: the murder in Chicago in 1924 of a child by two wealthy college students who killed for the thrill of the experience. Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb were intellectuals; too smart, they believed, for the police to catch them. When they were apprehended, state's attorney was certain that no defense could save them from the gallows. But the families of the murderers hired Clarence Darrow, entrusting their sons to the most famous lawyer in America in what would be one of the most sensational criminal trials in the history of American justice. Set against the backdrop of the 1920s; a time of prosperity, self-indulgence, and hedonistic excess on the brink of anarchy.

American Experience: The Perfect Crime
When Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, two college students from a wealthy suburb of Chicago, confessed to the brutal murder of 14-year-old Bobby Franks, the story made headlines across the country. The unlikely killers not only admitted their guilt, but also bragged that they had committed the crime for the thrill of it. As the case unfolded during the summer of 1924, with defense attorney Clarence Darrow and Cook County Prosecutor Robert Crowe debating the death penalty, the question of motive would be turned over and over again. What seemed like a simple matter of evil would give way to an assessment of the murderers' minds and an indictment of the forces that had shaped them, and set off a national debate about morality and capital punishment.