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Rule of Capture by Ona Russell
IN RULE OF CAPTURE, writer Ona Russell brings proto-feminist and advocate for justice Sarah Kaufman to Los Angeles in the aftermath of a blistering run-in with Southern racists and a famous trial in Tennessee. The savvy, unflappable protagonist is still haunted by events that transpired in Russell’s previous historical mystery, The Natural Selection; set against the historic and widely publicized 1925 “Scopes Monkey Trial,” which pitted religious fundamentalism against the theory of evolution, The Natural Selection follows Kaufman as she is pressed into unforeseen service as a sleuth. With fluid, cinematic prose, Russell places Kaufman at the center of a turbulent Tennessee heat wave, where she encounters celebrity litigators William Jennings Bryan and Clarence Darrow, eventually mulling over advice and insight garnered directly from renowned journalist H. L. Mencken, who covered the largely contrived courtroom drama at the time.
The third Sarah Kaufman mystery (the first, O’Brien’s Desk, is set in 1923) finds the earthy, pragmatic, but still attractive — both physically and sapiosexually — Toledo court officer in Los Angeles to witness the true-life trial of oil speculator and alleged huckster Courtney Chauncy Julian. Julian is suspected, along with several associates, of exploiting a small Santa Fe Springs oil discovery to fuel a fraudulent stock market run, enriching themselves at the expense of small investors, who were promised unbelievable returns on their investment. Kaufman has herself lost more than a modest part of her savings, so her visit to the City of Angels, her dreams, and her get-rich-quick schemes hinge, to some degree, on a hope that she will see justice served.
Taking a break from the Downtown Los Angeles courtroom, Russell’s protagonist crosses paths with a figure modeled, albeit loosely, after the sultry Spanish-Irish-American beauty and screen legend Rita Hayworth. Here, however, the woman is cast as the privileged, if neglected, Mexico-born wife of an advertising magnate; he has tested the constraints of society by marrying outside his race and station, stepping over the vigilantly enforced but invisible American color line. She recognizes Kaufman in front of the courthouse and dashes off minutes later in a panic, only to turn up dead. The LAPD see her as just another dead Mexican, and thus are only too happy to write her off as a heart attack victim. With undeniable evidence to the contrary, Kaufman rightfully suspects foul play and is compelled to search for answers.
Russell avails herself of the opportunity to make a homecoming of her own in Kaufman’s shoes, or rather Rita Bradford’s stylish size five Ferragamo heels, kicked off frantically at the onset of the story during the chance encounter under a rare L.A. drizzle with Kaufman, who recovers them out of courtesy. Later, after reading about the death of the woman who had so vehemently claimed to know her, Kaufman traces the high-end pair of heels to the shop in Boyle Heights where they were purchased.
Resurrected from history through the fictional adventures Russell has imagined for her in this trilogy of historical mysteries, the real Sarah Kaufman did, in fact, live in Toledo during the early part of the 20th century and was an actual officer of the court. A political progressive, she worked on behalf of women and children as the Lucas County Juvenile Court probation officer and a domestic relations counselor for three decades. She was also instrumental in the formation of renowned service organizations, among them the NAACP, the Jewish Education League, the Girl Scouts, Travelers Aid Society, and the Florence Crittenton home.
Ona Russell, who has become a champion for Kaufman, is the granddaughter of Sam Kantor, who moved to Los Angeles from New York and opened a shoe store at 2325 Brooklyn Avenue, in the heart of Boyle Heights, during the same period. Her father, Marvin “Marvy” Kantor, raised near the near mythical intersection of Brooklyn and Soto, became a physician thanks to the modest success realized by Russell’s immigrant grandfather. To this day, the storefront remains a footwear outlet, now owned and operated by an immigrant family from Mexico, in the community that has since the 1950s been a predominantly Mexican and Chicano enclave.
Stitching her own family’s story seamlessly into Sarah Kaufman’s revelatory journey, Russell invites us to follow her early ’20s alter ego to an opulent Tijuana casino and hotel resort at the arm of a complex, seductive, and successful US-born businessman who harbors dark secrets and is driven by an allegiance to an exploited class of farm, orchard, and factory laborers with whom he shares Mexican ancestry.
Amid the fascinating subplots that involve Kaufman’s hometown photojournalist boyfriend, Rita Bradford’s surviving husband, and the psychologically damaged scion of the dashing and dangerously provocative Chicano entrepreneur with whom she becomes smitten, Kaufman is determined to redeem herself and salve her own guilt over events in Tennessee by proving that Rita did not die of spontaneous heart failure but was murdered.
Alternating between taut, suspenseful storytelling and lush — occasionally languid — descriptions, Russell eases her readers into a welcome literary escape with well-paced intrigue, surprising subterfuge, and gripping secondary story lines that unfold around familiar architectural and geographical landmarks. Laced with evocative language, nonfictional events, and husky-throated, taboo romance across ethnic and class barriers (consummated with requisite sex painted in simultaneously subtle and steamy brushstrokes), Rule of Capture is a thoughtful thrill ride.
Read in order as the third Sarah Kaufman historical mystery or independently, it provides the gamut of unexpected twists and hairpin turns while also presenting a biting commentary on the uneasy truce between Latino Los Angeles and the city’s entrenched political, cultural, and economic elites. In the context of a gentrification wave that has recently placed Boyle Heights within its crosshairs, Russell’s tale takes on a deeper significance and makes Sarah Kaufman an indelible visionary I hope to meet again in another book someday.
The third Sarah Kaufman mystery (the first, O’Brien’s Desk, is set in 1923) finds the earthy, pragmatic, but still attractive — both physically and sapiosexually — Toledo court officer in Los Angeles to witness the true-life trial of oil speculator and alleged huckster Courtney Chauncy Julian. Julian is suspected, along with several associates, of exploiting a small Santa Fe Springs oil discovery to fuel a fraudulent stock market run, enriching themselves at the expense of small investors, who were promised unbelievable returns on their investment. Kaufman has herself lost more than a modest part of her savings, so her visit to the City of Angels, her dreams, and her get-rich-quick schemes hinge, to some degree, on a hope that she will see justice served.
Taking a break from the Downtown Los Angeles courtroom, Russell’s protagonist crosses paths with a figure modeled, albeit loosely, after the sultry Spanish-Irish-American beauty and screen legend Rita Hayworth. Here, however, the woman is cast as the privileged, if neglected, Mexico-born wife of an advertising magnate; he has tested the constraints of society by marrying outside his race and station, stepping over the vigilantly enforced but invisible American color line. She recognizes Kaufman in front of the courthouse and dashes off minutes later in a panic, only to turn up dead. The LAPD see her as just another dead Mexican, and thus are only too happy to write her off as a heart attack victim. With undeniable evidence to the contrary, Kaufman rightfully suspects foul play and is compelled to search for answers.
Russell avails herself of the opportunity to make a homecoming of her own in Kaufman’s shoes, or rather Rita Bradford’s stylish size five Ferragamo heels, kicked off frantically at the onset of the story during the chance encounter under a rare L.A. drizzle with Kaufman, who recovers them out of courtesy. Later, after reading about the death of the woman who had so vehemently claimed to know her, Kaufman traces the high-end pair of heels to the shop in Boyle Heights where they were purchased.
Resurrected from history through the fictional adventures Russell has imagined for her in this trilogy of historical mysteries, the real Sarah Kaufman did, in fact, live in Toledo during the early part of the 20th century and was an actual officer of the court. A political progressive, she worked on behalf of women and children as the Lucas County Juvenile Court probation officer and a domestic relations counselor for three decades. She was also instrumental in the formation of renowned service organizations, among them the NAACP, the Jewish Education League, the Girl Scouts, Travelers Aid Society, and the Florence Crittenton home.
Ona Russell, who has become a champion for Kaufman, is the granddaughter of Sam Kantor, who moved to Los Angeles from New York and opened a shoe store at 2325 Brooklyn Avenue, in the heart of Boyle Heights, during the same period. Her father, Marvin “Marvy” Kantor, raised near the near mythical intersection of Brooklyn and Soto, became a physician thanks to the modest success realized by Russell’s immigrant grandfather. To this day, the storefront remains a footwear outlet, now owned and operated by an immigrant family from Mexico, in the community that has since the 1950s been a predominantly Mexican and Chicano enclave.
Stitching her own family’s story seamlessly into Sarah Kaufman’s revelatory journey, Russell invites us to follow her early ’20s alter ego to an opulent Tijuana casino and hotel resort at the arm of a complex, seductive, and successful US-born businessman who harbors dark secrets and is driven by an allegiance to an exploited class of farm, orchard, and factory laborers with whom he shares Mexican ancestry.
Amid the fascinating subplots that involve Kaufman’s hometown photojournalist boyfriend, Rita Bradford’s surviving husband, and the psychologically damaged scion of the dashing and dangerously provocative Chicano entrepreneur with whom she becomes smitten, Kaufman is determined to redeem herself and salve her own guilt over events in Tennessee by proving that Rita did not die of spontaneous heart failure but was murdered.
Alternating between taut, suspenseful storytelling and lush — occasionally languid — descriptions, Russell eases her readers into a welcome literary escape with well-paced intrigue, surprising subterfuge, and gripping secondary story lines that unfold around familiar architectural and geographical landmarks. Laced with evocative language, nonfictional events, and husky-throated, taboo romance across ethnic and class barriers (consummated with requisite sex painted in simultaneously subtle and steamy brushstrokes), Rule of Capture is a thoughtful thrill ride.
Read in order as the third Sarah Kaufman historical mystery or independently, it provides the gamut of unexpected twists and hairpin turns while also presenting a biting commentary on the uneasy truce between Latino Los Angeles and the city’s entrenched political, cultural, and economic elites. In the context of a gentrification wave that has recently placed Boyle Heights within its crosshairs, Russell’s tale takes on a deeper significance and makes Sarah Kaufman an indelible visionary I hope to meet again in another book someday.
¤
LARB Contributor
Abel Salas publishes and edits Brooklyn & Boyle, an art, literature, and community journal based in historic Boyle Heights, on L.A.’s Eastside. A poet and journalist, he also co-founded Corazón del Pueblo, a Los Angeles community cultural arts center and collective. He has taught creative writing in L.A. County juvenile halls and his writing has appeared in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times Magazine, Los Angeles Magazine, Latina Magazine, and The Austin Chronicle. Born in Houston and raised in the cities of El Paso, Los Angeles, and Austin, Salas has read poetry across the Southwest, in DC, Havana, Cuba, Toluca, Mexico, and Mexico City. He is the author of chapbook Lone Oak in December/El Encino Invernal (1998) and the monograph Hija de Guadalupe/Child of Guadalupe (2007).
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