Claudette Colbert, who won an Academy Award for Best Actress in “It Happened One Night” in 1934, once said: “I must never think about death. People who think about death are mentally sick.” Colbert died at the ripe age of 92 in 1996.
While some people would much rather live life in the now, many of us can’t help but wonder about tomorrow, and more specifically, death. Some of us even obsess about it.
Luckily, we’re not alone in our sickness. Alan W. Petrucelli, author of “Morbid Curiosity: The Disturbing Demises of the Famous and Infamous,” is one of them.
Petrucelli is not just a writer. He is a fanatic when it comes to celebrities. It just so happens that most of them are dead. “Morbid Curiosity” is his first book. However, Petrucelli has worked as a freelance writer for such publications as the New York Times, People and US Weekly, gaining credibility throughout the entertainment industry as the know-it-all for dead celebrities.
This book does not only seek to inform readers about current deaths but also inform us about celebrities who were part of the silver-screen era. The book, though petite at only 222 pages including references, is compact with facts about every type of celebrity ranging from the classics — Rudolph Valentino and Lya De Putti — to the contemporary — Tupak Shakur and Natasha Richardson.
Maybe you don’t want to admit that you sat watching the television for three hours waiting to hear how Heath Ledger died, but those facts are in here.
Likewise, Petrucelli goes backwards in time, taking readers to 1822 when “Frankenstein author” Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley was given her deceased husband’s heart by writer Edward Trelawny who snatched it at the funeral pyre as a way to relieve her sorrows.
There is one commonality in this book. Not all of the celebrities are connected, and certainly, you may not be aware of all of their accolades, but every single one of them has a story to tell. Among the fatal stories of gruesome car wrecks, victims of serial killers, suicides and crimes of passion, the rumors are dispelled and the facts are presented.
Whatever type of novel you enjoy best, it’s a guarantee that you will enjoy this book if you have any interest in “the strange, startling and utterly fascinating stories behind the world’s most notorious celebrity deaths.”
It may fit into the genre of infotainment, but it is the best book seen to date that has managed to take the topic of death and make it enjoyable.
Petrucelli molds fact and observation by using his humorous and wildly creative mind in order to share his product — a love for famed history with a slew of us who can’t help but be fascinated by the morbid nature of death.
Rating: W W W W W
