Adventure classics -- Murder most Texan

Blood and Money

by Thomas Thompson

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Houston plastic surgeon John Hill’s beautiful equestrian-socialite wife Joan was as good for his rising practice as a full page newspaper ad, Texas journalist Thomas “Tommy” Thompson wrote in his 1976 true crime narrative, Blood and Money. Unfortunately for himself, Dr. Hill had a taste for adultery. And a wealthy oilman father-in-law, Ash Robinson, who had a history of not letting legalities stand in the way of what he wanted. When his doted-on only child Joan died, what Robinson wanted was John Hill, dead.

The Hill marriage, many who knew the couple would say, was doomed from the start. “Joan seemed a creature of daylight, open, unsuspicious, now shadow cluttering her world,” Thompson wrote. “John seemed a resident of the night, a man who relished the concealing cloak of darkness.”

When Hill returned to their home in Houston’s wealthy River Oaks neighborhood after still another all-night absence, Joan threatened him with divorce -- and the loss of daddy‘s money. The next day, she fell ill. After Joan’s death from a mysterious infection, Hill married -- and divorced -- his lover; married again; and was tried for the “murder by omission” of Joan. The murder case ended in a mistrial, but before another could take place, small-time criminal Bobby Vandiver shot Hill point blank in his home in the presence of his son and third wife.

Arrested for Hill’s murder, Vandiver implicated Joan’s father, Ash Robinson. But before his own trial, Vandiver also died in a bizarre shootout. Never tried, Robinson died in 1985, three years after author Thompson.

Thompson’s Blood and Money had special significance for me, because I was living in Houston at the time of many of case’s events. So when I saw the name Larry D. Thompson, the “good friend and a good lawyer” Tommy Thompson dedicated the book to, during last spring’s Houston Writers Guild conference, I had to hear him.

“It’s probably still one of the great crime stories about Houston,” Larry Thompson said of his brother’s book.

Texas criminal defense lawyer Richard “Racehorse” Haynes, he said, “told Tommy, ‘I didn’t think anyone could write that story and make it make sense.’”

The best selling book spawned three libel suits, all of which Thompson won, defended by his brother Larry. For more about Tommy Thompson and his work, see the Texas State Historical Association’s site,
www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fth53/.

Larry Thompson, after years of legal work, has recently started writing thrillers. For more about his writing, see my May 14, 2012, post, “Thrills and spills of thriller writing.”

More than forty years after her 1969 death, Joan Robinson Hill still commands such a wide following that I couldn’t find a copyright-free picture of her. Perhaps it’s fitting that the picture illustrating this post is of the late Texas actress Farrah Fawcett, in her portrayal of Joan for the made for TV movie based on the book, Murder in Texas.

(Next Wednesday -- Adventure classics begins a February of animal adventures with two of the oddest heroes in literature, in E. B. White’s Charlotte’s Web.)

Wordcraft -- Thrills and spills of thriller writing

I leafed through the schedule for the conference sponsored by the Houston Writer’s Guild, marking possible programs to attend. One was about thriller writing, something I’d meant to try, and the speaker was a lawyer named Larry D. Thompson. I marked it as a maybe. And then the announcer introduced Thompson -- as the younger brother of the late Thomas “Tommy” Thompson, author of the bestselling true crime narrative, Blood and Money.

Thompson’s discussion zoomed from “possibly” to “definitely, absolutely, must hear.” Because besides having an interest in gory details to an extent sometimes embarrassing to my family, I lived in Houston during the events described in Blood and Money, the story of the suspicious death of a Texas socialite, followed by the hit-man style murder of her husband (and the prime suspect in her death). I’d never forgive myself if I didn’t hear what someone who knew Tommy Thompson as well as a brother could, had to say.

“I don’t have to make up stories,” Larry Thompson quoted his brother as saying. “I hear a story and go out and do my investigation.”

He follows his brother’s procedure -- with a twist. Show him a news article and he can imagine a story to go with it.

For his first novel, “I decided to pick a subject that was not in the least bit controversial, so I chose the abortion debate,” he told his conference audience with a self-deprecatingly deadpan expression. The result, So Help Me God, told in the form of a mock trial, was rejected by traditional publishers.

But his dentist and a client read it and liked it. The dentist asked Thompson to run off a few print on demand copies for a book club. After more favorable comments from readers and attention at the publishing conference, BookExpo America, Thompson wrote a second book, dealing with the insanity defense. Although rejected again, it gained Thompson contracts to write his next two books -- The Trial, dealing with pharmaceutical drug testing; and his latest, Dead Peasants, about employers who benefit from life insurance on their employees.

So far, Thompson still writes thrillers around his schedule as a trial lawyer. The key to doing both, he said, is writing consistently, “daily or at least several times a week.“

He heeds his big brother’s advice as well. “(Tommy) said he always quit in the middle of a sentence because he knew he could come back the next day and finish the sentence.”

And he recommends getting to know other thriller writers and their work, for instance, by attending the annual convention ThrillerFest, scheduled for July 11-14 this year in New York. For more about Larry Thompson, see his website, www.larrydthompson.com/. See more about ThrillerFest at www.thrillerfest.com/.

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Want to hear more about thrillers? Steve Berry will discuss his latest book, The Columbus Affair, next week, at 7 p.m. Tuesday, May 22, at Highland Park United Methodist Church, 3300 Mockingbird Lane, in Dallas. And Berry will lead a writers’ workshop Wednesday, May 23, at St. Paul’s United Methodist Church, 5501 Main St., in Houston. (Not to mention signing volumes at Houston’s Murder By The Book the evening of May 23.)

For information about the Highland Park event, see
www.hpumc.org/authorslive/. Register online for the Houston workshop at www.preservationhouston.org/workshop/. And for information about signings at Murder By The Book, see www.murderbooks.com/.