Nina Barrett on Leopold & Loeb

December Luncheon

The Chicago press labeled it the crime of the century and breathlessly reported about the eyeglasses, the typewriter, and the interrogations that solved it. Editorialists used it to decry Jazz Age excesses. A playwright drew on it and Hitchcock’s Rope brought it to the screen. Ira Levin’s Compulsion was inspired by it.

But we are going to hear about a different detective story, one that began in Northwestern’s Special Collections, with a trove of documents that in the normal course of events might have been lost to fire, flood, mildew, or bureaucratic carelessness. Instead, out of the linear feet of letters, court pleadings, transcripts, psychological evaluations, and more, the real tale emerges.

Join Nina Barrett, whose book The Leopold & Loeb Files is on the shelf at her store down the alley in Evanston, and whose work at the Deering Library brings Darrow for the defense and more to life so vividly.

And of course, you will be able to purchase books and have them signed!

December 13 Luncheon: Union League Club, 65 W. Jackson Boulevard. Buffet opens at 11:30 am; program 12:30-1:30. Luncheon is $35. Program free but please let us know you’re coming. Reservations or cancellations for lunch by noon Wednesday the week of the luncheon. Reserve and pay at caxtonclub.org, call 312-255-3710, or e-mail caxtonclub@newberry.org