Into The Water 
 by:Fanning, Diane 
 Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Location: 175 Fifth Ave, NY,NY 
Copyright:2004
Cover:   
Type:Paperback
  
   
 
reviewed by: Lynard Barnes 
 5/1/2009
 
Comment: Richard Marc Evonitz, a serial killer who killed himself upon being surrounded on a Florida highway, is examined in this superficial exploration of his crimes. 
 
 
  Diane Fanning's INTO THE WATER starts in June 2002 with Richard Marc Evonitz waking up from the dreamless world of a serial-rapist to discover that his latest victim has fled the confinement of his house and was probably on her way to the Richmond County, Virginia Sheriff's Department office around the corner.

From there, INTO THE WATER sinks into the dribble of formula crime-book reporting. Richard Evonitz ends up blowing his brains out after being surrounded by members of the Sarasota, Florida Police Department. The man who had murdered three young girls, was in the process of murdering another before she escaped, was himself dead by his own hand. From beginning to end, author Fannings reports the facts, makes some conjectures and leaves a tapestry of faces and places seeping through the smoke that the reader takes to be Richard Marc Evonitz. Diane Fanning's clarity and focus in writing is beyond question. But why this book?

In most books about crime, it is relatively easy to determine what the author is up to aside from condemning criminality. Quite a few expose weaknesses in the criminal justice system. Some promote the dogged determination of a law enforcement officer-police or prosecuting attorney. Some flirt with the larger questions of individual responsibility and societal culpability in making criminals. INTO THE WATER has none of this. It is a snippet of time in the life of a criminal and his victims, undistinguished from the life of any other criminal and any other victim. This consistency of real world banality requires anyone who raises their voice in the particular to go beyond the daily news. Achieving that goal is by no means easy. The twenty-four hour, seven days a week news cycle skims anything remotely related to a headline and occasionally scoops a little deeper. Examples are what cable COURTTV (now called something else) and what MSNBC presents as in dept crime reporting. This makes it very difficult for crime book authors to present something resembling a unique voice.

The last refuge for the crime book author either without a perspective or reluctant to provide one is victimology. Rarely-as in almost never-does a crime book reveal the full
 
   
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 impact of a crime upon the victims of the crime. “Victims” include not only the person against whom a crime was committed, but their family and community as well. In works such as INTO THE WATER, the crime victim is placed in the impending crime situation. The victim is then victimized. If a death has resulted, the crime author will devote a few words about the funeral and family reaction. The victim is more often than not presented as a prop to move the writing along. You get this feeling from reading INTO THE WATER, though the author can not be blamed too harshly for this. It is the formula of crime books. However, when the focus of the crime book is supposedly the criminal, then the reader should at least get a realistic portrait of the criminal. INTO THE WATER fails this basic mission. (For an excellent example of crime book reporting that goes beyond the formula, read Jeanine Cummings' 2004 book, “A Rip In Heaven”, reviewed by TGBRJ in April 2005 ).

The criticism here about crime books in general and a specific crime book which does in fact discuss a criminal, in this instance Richard Marc Evonitz, might raise the question of why read crime books at all. The question is really not pertinent to the criticism. However, readers read for readers' reasons. Maybe there is some free-floating idea out there that all criminals come from broken-homes, or that practically all serial killers have never served in the military or functioned poorly. Maybe there is a free-floating idea out there that evil implants itself in the human psyche when religion is absent. Readers read to explore preconceptions or to form conceptions or even to create a conception to “explain it all”. INTO THE WATER misses the “reasons to read this” boat.
 
   
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