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  • Published: 29 March 2022
  • ISBN: 9780593177440
  • Imprint: RH US eBook Childrens
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 368

Murder Among Friends

How Leopold and Loeb Tried to Commit the Perfect Crime




How did two teenagers brutally murder an innocent child...and why? And how did their brilliant lawyer save them from the death penalty in 1920s Chicago? Written by a prolific master of narrative nonfiction, this is a compulsively readable true-crime story based on an event dubbed the "crime of the century."

In 1924, eighteen-year-old college students Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb made a decision: they would commit the perfect crime by kidnapping and murdering a child they both knew. But they made one crucial error: as they were disposing of the body of young Bobby Franks, whom they had bludgeoned to death, Nathan's eyeglasses fell from his jacket pocket.

Multi-award-winning author Candace Fleming depicts every twist and turn of this harrowing case--how two wealthy, brilliant young men planned and committed what became known as the crime of the century, how they were caught, why they confessed, and how the renowned criminal defense attorney Clarence Darrow enabled them to avoid the death penalty.

Following on the success of such books as The Rise and Fall of Charles Lindbergh and The Family Romanov, this acclaimed nonfiction writer brings to heart-stopping life one of the most notorious crimes in our country's history.

  • Published: 29 March 2022
  • ISBN: 9780593177440
  • Imprint: RH US eBook Childrens
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 368

About the author

Candace Fleming

Candace Fleming is the award-winning author of more than fifty books for children and young adults. The recipient of the American Library Association’s Children’s Literature Legacy Award and Margaret A. Edwards Award, she has written many acclaimed nonfiction titles, including Death in the Jungle: Murder, Betrayal, and the Lost Dream of Jonestown, winner of the YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction and the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award; Murder Among Friends: How Leopold and Loeb Tried to Commit the Perfect Crime, which received four starred reviews; The Rise and Fall of Charles Lindbergh, also a YALSA recipient; and The Family Romanov: Murder, Rebellion, and the Fall of Imperial Russia, which won the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award for Nonfiction and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and was recognized as a Sibert Nonfiction Honor Book. Her beloved picture books include Giant Squid, a Sibert Honor Book, and Oh, No!, which received three starred reviews.

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