Title: Golden Boy
Author: John Glatt
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Release Date: July 20, 2021
Page Count: 320
Rating: 4 stars out of 5
Read book blurb here
Buckley, Deerfield, Princeton, Maidstone, East Hampton. Tommy Gilbert, Jr. had it all - model good looks, a great education, a loving family - and yet he is now serving 30 years to life for murdering his father by firing a bullet through his brain.
Tommy had been blessed with both hands, yet it was this very thing that prevented him getting any sort of real help. As a few friends said:
Nobody thought this handsome, well-educated, privileged Princeton man was capable of violence [...] if Tommy looked like me, people would have thought he was an insane person fairly quickly.
I must admit that I really struggled with this book because while I feel that Tommy's mental illness (paranoid schizophrenia) was absolutely the major factor in the murder, time and again Tommy was given a second, third, fourth, ad nauseum chances at redemption solely because of his looks and his background.
And in a sense, this is the same struggle that the court faced with this case. It took four years to bring the case to trial because of the difficulty in determining if Tommy was sane enough to stand trial. He refused to speak with medical personnel tasked with determining his mental state, he refused to take any medication, he refused to participate in his defense. Yet he also carefully planned to murder his father - purchasing the Glock he used, sending his mother out of the townhouse on an errand, carefully walking away from the scene, etc.
The author had access to Tommy's mother, Sheila Gilbert, and others close to him, including his attorney Arnold Levine. There's plenty here showing that Tommy's parents were in denial about his mental illness - "They appeared more concerned about their reputation than their son's highly dangerous mental state" - and that their status and wealth had protected him in the past from consequences. And Sheila strongly advocated for her son getting "as light a sentence as possible" while, IMHO, failing to advocate for her murdered husband. But again, this entire case is a horrific Sophie's choice that far too many families are dealing with every day.
At times, the narrative dragged with far too many parties and events described in great detail, but overall Glatt clearly lays out a dilemma to which there is no clear answer. 4 stars.
I received an ARC from the Publisher, via NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.