Dubuque Telegraph Herald, April 3, 2005
"Iowa Murder Mystery Focus of New Book "
By: Don Knefel, Critic at Large

            Heavily publicized murder cases may seem a recent development in our media-saturated culture, but they're hardly new.   Just over 100 years ago, the bludgeoning of an Iowa farmer named John Hossack stirred media frenzy and eventually made its way into the canon of American literature.

            That is the subject of a fine new book by Patricia L. Bryan and Thomas Wolf--Midnight Assassin: A Murder in America's Heartland (Algonquin 2005).   In this compelling and exhaustively researched narrative, Bryan and Wolf tell the story of a troubled farm family and a brutal unsolved murder, set in the rugged and unforgiving world of Midwestern rural life at the turn of the 20 th century.

            Bryan, a law professor at the University of North Carolina, and Wolf, her husband, a writing consultant for the Association of American Medical Colleges, both hold graduate degrees from the University of Iowa.

            Bryan, who teaches a class on law and literature at UNC, was drawn to the subject through Susan Glaspell's well-known 1917 short story "A Jury of Her Peers," based on the Hossack case.   Wolf began his collaboration on the project in 1998.

              The story they tell is as much about the case itself as its coverage in the newspapers of the day.   And, what is fascinating is that the same prejudices that infect journalistic objectivity were as prevalent then as they are now.

            Bryan and Wolf's treatment is meticulous, thorough and insightful, providing a highly textured description of Iowa life circa 1900--its customs, mores, language and its criminal and judicial procedures.

            Midnight Assassin takes us back to "a pivotal moment in the history of the Midwest...a time when notions about justice, law and the roles of men and women in society were in transition."

            The Hossack murder embodies the dark side of rural America: the relentless harshness of farm life (hardly the pastoral fantasy portrayed in romantic fictions), the troubles within families isolated by distance and work, and the suffering of farm women in a patriarchal system that relegated them to slave labor without benefit of social standing.

            And the case, which remains unsolved to this day, reveals much about how justice hangs on the skill and ethics of judges, prosecutors and defense attorneys, the physical demeanor of defendants and the predilections of jurors.   Margaret Hossack, the victim's wife, was convicted on inconclusive circumstantial evidence and subjective speculation.

            Bryan and Wolf delve deeply into all these issues, skillfully weaving social history with a painstaking re-creation of the killing, the inquest, Margaret Hossack's two trials, and her imprisonment and eventual release when the second had a hung jury.   The authors also consider Susan Glaspell's role in the media coverage and her subsequent transmutation of the material into fiction, as well as the case's lingering doubts.

            In this labor of love, Bryan and Wolf have given John Hossack's murder its definitive treatment.   Their book will be among the lasting resources for those seeking answers to a baffling and memorable American crime.