The Darkest Glare

January 25, 2021
This entertaining if uneven true crime narrative from Jacobs (Strange as It Seems: The Impossible Life of Gordon Zahler) spotlights two ambitious L.A. real estate developers in the late 1970s: Richard Kasparov, a glib, charismatic pitchman, and his partner Jerry Schneiderman, a nerdy but gifted designer. The pair hired rough-edged Howard Garrett as their construction supervisor. Kasparov turned out to be a bipolar thief who almost gutted the firm, earning Schneiderman’s distrust and rousing Garrett’s obsessive hatred. What follows is both horrifying and hilarious, as Garrett tries to organize an assassination-for-hire team by recruiting hapless drug addicts who couldn't find the right time or place to kill Kasparov. Eventually, they succeeded, and Garrett was charged with murder. Less successful is the author’s recounting of Garrett’s trial for Kasparov’s killing. Jacobs later shows how Garrett’s pathological intimidation reshaped the lives of Schneiderman and other survivors, but he piles on too much incidental information he gleaned during years of Schneiderman’s acquaintance and can’t resist the impulse to add sour observations on Americans’ hunger for possessions. Though undoubtedly odd and often unfocused, this still manages to fascinate. (Mar.)Correction: An earlier version of this review mischaracterized in one instance the nature of the relationship between Richard Kasparov, Jerry Schneiderman, and Howard Garrett.

February 1, 2021
The engrossingly bizarre tale of a murder plot within Los Angeles real estate circles. Journalist Jacobs ably captures the seamy backdrop of 1970s Southern California via the strange saga of acquaintance and prominent Angeleno Jerry Schneiderman. "Over two years," writes the author, "he said not a peep about how he transformed himself from a picked-on Jewish kid from a throwaway section of L.A. into a successful developer/public advocate with an infectious cackle. Never once did he mention that he was the weak tip in a murder triangle." Jacobs describes this milieu as chaotic yet ambitious: "This is what hungry companies did in the late-seventies LA of social experimentation. They fed the need, caring little if it were for a chiropractor, pop psychology gimmick, or conglomerate." The murder improbably germinated due to an ill-fated partnership in an upstart space-planning firm comprised of charismatic Richard Kasparov (whose financial chicanery would imperil the business), workaholic Jerry, and their foreman Howard, "a fair-skinned Charles Bronson" whose competent exterior concealed a spiraling violent rage. About Howard, the author wonders, "why did an old-school construction chief with a trick back, nervous wife, and a union card decide to mortgage his soul?" Following workplace conflicts, Howard recruited hapless underworld figures for an ambitious murder-for-hire scheme, starting with his erstwhile partners. After numerous bungled attempts, which Jacobs plays for humor and tension, Howard's gunman succeeded in murdering Richard. He then confronted Jerry with insults, threats, and blackmail, noting, "I've killed before Richard and gotten away with it. And I'll do it again--with you." Eventually, Howard was arrested but not before subjecting Jerry and others to protracted trauma. Notes the author, "Should Howard get out, prosecutors still believed, some of those who dared to tell the truth about him would 'be as good as dead.' " (Howard died in prison.) Jacobs writes in a pulpy, flamboyant style that mostly masks some repetition and digression. An entertaining true-crime period piece built around a chillingly odd sociopathic villain.

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