Double Play: The San Francisco City Hall Killings

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Summary: Countdown to death and mayhem
Review: The city of San Francisco and, to a lesser extent, the nation were throttled in November 1978 when a former city supervisor named Dan White opened fire and killed Mayor George Moscone and city supervisor Harvey Milk. Author Mike Weiss' book is one of the few that ticks down the seconds to the double killing and, though no one knew it at the time, to a social uprising that left much of the city in ruin. That Harvey Milk was the city's first openly gay official sparked a fury in the city's dense homosexual population and ignited speculation that White's motive, in part, was his acknowledged anti-gay position. For many, that two men were gunned down for such a hallow reason was perhaps only a small part of the complete story, and Weiss' book mercifully does not blame White's crime solely on homophobia. Instead, we get a picture of a professionally and financially desperate man whose act may have been largely to avenge his not being reinstated to his job after he resigned. San Franciscans literally exploded, however, when what they perceived as an open-and-shut case of murder warranting a death sentence was deemed by a jury to be voluntary manslaughter, and the protests in the city's streets came to be known as the "White Night Riots" with property damages in the millions. For all practical purposes, the city's nightmare ended with White's suicide after his parole from prison after just six years. This nuts-and-bolts synopsis is greatly detailed by Weiss' vivid reconstruction of the personalities and politics that were on a collision course, and his work emerges as an informative commentary on a major event in the city's rich history. Additionally, while there have been some books written about both Moscone and Milk, few (if any) have been done about their killer. To some extent, Weiss manages to give us an in-depth character study of White and which few other writers have even attempted, much less achieved. In sum, this book has murder, sex, politics and family, their ultimate collision that eventually cost three lives is all the more tragic because it really happened.