The Queen: The Forgotten Life Behind an American Myth

Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award in BiographyIn this critically acclaimed true crime tale of "welfare queen" Linda Taylor, a Slate editor reveals a "wild, only-in-America story" of political manipulation and murder (Attica Locke, Edgar Award-winning author).On the South Side of Chicago in 1974, Linda Taylor reported a phony burglary, concocting a lie about stolen furs and jewelry. The detective who checked it out soon discovered she was a welfare cheat who drove a Cadillac to collect ill-gotten government checks. And that was just the beginning: Taylor, it turned out, was also a kidnapper, and possibly a murderer. A desperately ill teacher, a combat-traumatized Marine, an elderly woman hungry for companionship — after Taylor came into their lives, all three ended up dead under suspicious circumstances. But nobody — not the journalists who touted her story, not the police, and not presidential candidate Ronald Reagan — seemed to care about anything but her welfare thie