In the last twenty or thirty pages, the writing improved marginally, but the book’s central problem is that it claims to rebut certain theories regarding the Lindbergh case, while dismissing most of them with what amounts to an “I said so.”   Where I come from, that doesn’t constitute a rebuttal.   It’s true that these theories can get pretty outlandish, and for most of them, I have no problem with Fisher citing the principle of Occam’s razor and snorting, “Whatever.”   According to the case evidence, any theory positing that Hauptmann had nothing at all to do with the kidnapping is really not workable.   But what about the possibility that Hauptmann didn’t do everything — that he took the fall for another person or a group of people, or that he wouldn’t confess to the crime because, technically, he didn’t kill the baby?   Because, again according to the case evidence, that theory is workable.   Not probable, and basically not provable either (anyone who could verify it has long since died), but workable.   Fisher does himself and his own prior writing on the case a disservice by refusing to consider it, particularly given that his reasoning is more or less “a jury convicted Hauptmann and only Hauptmann, and I agree, QED.”   Sorry, not good enough.

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