RaveSpectrum Culture... gripping and affecting ... He emerges so vividly from the pages of Weinman’s book, often through his own words, that the doubts about his guilt that eventually led to his release seem almost comically hazy and insubstantial compared to the evidence of his true nature ... Except for an electrifying coda, Scoundrel takes a chronological approach, falling naturally into parts covering the different phases of Smith’s life and career. The first and rightfully the most powerful of these is the opening section, which deals with the brutal murder and its immediate aftermath. It’s not much of an exaggeration to say that Weinman does Zielinski justice where generations of lawmakers largely failed to do so ... a fascinating and compulsive narrative and an absorbing, sometimes deeply unpleasant book which, in the end has nothing extenuating whatsoever to say about Edgar Smith. He may have fooled people in his lifetime with his articulacy and modicum of charisma, but on the page he is revealed as he really was. A deeply unpleasant man, a sociopathic murderer who was callous, manipulative, selfish and self-aggrandizing ... The book leaves a lasting, tragic impression behind it of the wasted years and wasted lives of everyone drawn into Smith’s tawdry little world: his wives and family, Smith himself and, most of all Vickie Zielinski, just a normal teenage girl with normal teenage interests, whose future was stolen when her life was brutally cut short.
