The 1985 book Savage Grace by Natalie Robins and Steven M. L. Aronson, told the story of Barbara Daly, a social climbing beauty who married Brooks Baekeland, the heir to a plastics fortune, and her incestuous relationship with her damaged son, Tony, who wound up stabbing her to death in 1972. Coming out when it did, in the era of the Reagans and Dynasty and Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, the book had a special appeal, especially since it was written mostly in the form of an oral history, with testimony from various observers and other interested parties. Tony's murder of his mother may have made it possible to file it neatly under "true crime", but what gave it is juice was the chance to sit in on what amounted to a seminar's worth of gossip about just how deeply twisted and fucked-up a very rich, very beautiful, very socially ambitious family really was. For maximum impact, the book ought to have been filmed not long after it came out, maybe with Brian De Palma or the Barbet Schroeder of Reversal of Fortune at the helm, but it might still be good sleazy fun if Tom Kalin hadn't gotten ahold of it.
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