A Review: "The Secret Life and Brutal Death of Mamie Thurman"

By David M. Kinchen
Huntingtonnews.net Book Critic

http://www.huntingtonnews.net/columns/081006-kinchen-columnsbookreview.h...

It has all the elements of a John Sayles ("Matewan") movie: Political corruption on a massive scale, a Bible Belt coal mining community where liquor was consumed and marital fidelity was regularly ignored...Not to mention a brutal murder that foreshadowed the "Black Dahlia" murder of Elizabeth Ann Short in Los Angeles 15 years later.

We're talking about "The Secret Life and Brutal Death of Mamie Thurman" (Quarrier Press, Charleston, WV, 215 pages, $15.95) by F. Keith Davis.

In his revised second edition of a book published a few years ago, Davis explores the murder of Mamie Thurman in Logan, WV in June 1932. Logan County, of which Logan is the county seat and largest town, was ruled by one of the most corrupt sheriffs in Mountain State history, "Dapper Don" Chafin, who extorted protection money from every business in the county.

Mamie Thurman was 32 when she met her end in the most horrific fashion, with her mutilated body dumped on a hillside outside the town of 2,500. Davis provides extensive background to the murder, including a description of rampant alcohol and drug abuse in the waning years of prohibition, a key club where members arranged affairs and what many consider the railroading of Clarence Stephenson, a nearly illiterate black handyman/chauffeur of one of Mamie's lovers, Henry Robertson.

(Excerpt from December 10th article, "BOOKS I LIKED: This is NOT a List of the Best Books of 2008; It's a List of My Favorites" by David Kinchen, at www.huntingtonnews.net)