Headline-grabbing femme fatale Nancy Kissel made a huge mistake more than a decade before the 2003 murder of her investment-banker husband, Robert, in Hong Kong. Her path to notoriety began when she married into a wealthy, but highly dysfunctional, American family.
Non-fiction author Joe McGinniss masterfully informs and titillates, just what the true-crime crowd loves, in Never Enough (2008, Pocket Star Books, 376 pages). Most readers will learn more about the Kissels than they probably know about their own kin.
Robert, a high-roller with Merrill Lynch, liked to say there was “no such thing” as too-much wealth. Nancy took the same approach to spending. These attitudes doomed them in a disturbing saga of wealth, power, delusion and violence.
The author's research can't be faulted. For example, he describes Hong Kong accurately. “Of its 8,000 buildings, 7,500 are high-rises. A small percentage is luxury apartment towers. The rest, stretching to the horizon in all directions, are featureless, identical blocks of concrete jammed so close together that you could reach out your window and eat your neighbor's dinner. Nine months a year the humidity has the kick of a horse. Twelve months a year the air is so polluted it could choke the horse that just kicked you.”
Nancy and Robert imagined that people thought they had “the best marriage in the universe”. In fact, they had one of the worst.
According to McGinniss, most members of the Kissel family had serious character flaws. Mean-spirited disputes and misguided ambitions marred their family gatherings.
Although emotionally reliant on a blue-collar lover back in the United States, 39-year-old Nancy, simultaneously hot-tempered, vindictive and fragile, refused to divorce the wealthy husband who funded her extravagance. When Robert learned of her adultery, abandoned hope of reconciling and planned to cast her aside, she refused to accept his verdict.
The wealthy wife hatched a plot. “During the 10 days between her own arrival in Hong Kong and Rob's return, Nancy conducted Internet searches, using the following terms: ‘sleeping pills’, ‘drug overdose’ and ‘medication causing heart attack’.” Was there no turning back?
In nauseating detail, McGinniss pauses to tell precisely how corpses decompose. His description may be slightly excessive, but the justification becomes clear.
After drugging her husband with a spiked milkshake, Nancy bashed him to death with mighty blows to the skull. Despite the proximity of her three children and two domestic helpers, she kept the decomposing corpse in a bedroom for several days, wrapping it in plastic, pillows and carpet before calling workers to carry an unusually heavy, foul-smelling “old carpet” to a storeroom. The inept disposal effort deceived no one.
“The carpet was eight feet long. Chow could see that it had been rolled around a bulky object about six feet long. He and his crew also could smell the carpet. One of the men retched. Chow told two men to roll in the luggage trolley. Grunting loudly while trying not to inhale, the four men lifted the stinking, untidy heap onto the wheeled platform.”
When on trial in 2005, Nancy claimed to have killed in self-defense after years of abuse by a violent, drug-addled, sexually deviant spouse. Of course, her three-month trial overflowed with dramatic moments, lurid allegations and telling testimonies.
A proven wordsmith, McGinniss, from Massachusetts, has written 10 earlier books. They include Going to Extremes, Fatal Vision, Blind Faith and Cruel Doubt.
Never Enough tells a tragic tale of huge failures. The author gives all the lurid details about the most notorious murder case in Hong Kong's recent history.
Approval rating: 74 per cent.
For more information: www.simonsays.com
(April 1, 2009)
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