Volume 24, Number 15 · September 29, 1977
Rigging the Lawrence Case
By Nigel Dennis
T.E. Lawrence
by Desmond Stewart
Harper & Row, 352 pp., $15.00
Some years ago, a retired inspector of police from Philadelphia wrote a memoir of the Criminals-I-Have-Known sort. One instructive part of it explained how helpful criminals are to detectives by signing their names to all their crimes. We all know about Adler's 'life style' today, but the inspector showed that for the criminal there is a 'crime style' too—a habitual, inescapable, individual way of doing wrong. He cited among others a burglar who specialized in stealing the expensive suits of natty dressers and might well have become the nation's Closet Robber No. 1 but for his crime style, which was twisted by a detestation of the male vest. He could never bring himself to steal a vest, so when the denuded owner called the cops, one glance at the closet with its neat line of hangers dressed simply in vests allowed them to exclaim immediately; 'Well, well! So old Bill's out of jail, is he?' and send a police car to pick him up at once. The poor man spent most of his life in prison, and though some will say that he could have amended his crime style easily enough if the police had tipped him off to what was wrong with it, the psychologist would probably disagree. Only an analyst could have teased out the basic vestphobia and given society a perfected three-piece thief.
Review, 2302 words
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