"The Lindbergh Case" covers every aspect of the sensational 1932 kidnap/murder case and its aftermath, drawing extensively from public and non-public sources. I thought that Fisher evenhandedly examined all credible evidence remaining in the records. He says up front, however, that his conclusion is that Hauptman acted alone, planning the kidnap and cold-bloodedly killing Lindbergh's infant son for the ransom money.

I appreciated Fisher's candor. But just as much, any thoughtful reader will appreciate Fisher's inclusion of much evidence that flatly contradicts his conclusion, or at least points to reasonable doubts about Hauptman's sole guilt.

Fisher's evenhanded and thorough approach destroys today's most scurillous theory about the Lindbergh baby's death -- that Charles Lindbergh killed the baby himself. If the idea was ever seriously credible, the weight of the evidence for Hauptman and other conspirator(s) snatching the baby is overwhelming ... in fact, Fisher dutifully includes the account of a Jersey State trooper, who saw 2 sets of footprints leading away from the house in the mud before the yard was trampled. As I say, Mr. Fisher is thorough and honest in his reporting -- he concludes Hauptmann acted alone but includes ample data that render his conclusion inexplicable, or at least questionable.

Fisher also documents and details the strange and disquieting cast of characters swirling around Richard Hauptman in the Bronx, New York, from 1932 to 1935. Isidore Fisch -- who eyewitnesses linked to the ransom money and the Bronx cemetery where the ransom drop was made. Numerous witnesses testified that Fisch went around with a shoebox full of traceable gold notes from the ransom -- he kept leaving the box where people could steal it (to spend the money and get caught). But people kept giving the box back to Fisch without stealing a dime, comically vexing the conspirator's ideas about human nature and leaving him with a fortune he knew he couldn't spend. Fisch fled the U.S. for Leipzig Germany (he applied for his trip the day after the Lindberg baby's body was found) -- his family reported he died shortly afterward. Hauptmann claimed that Fisch left the shoebox with him -- a Brother in crime?

Then there's John Condon, who attached himself to Lindbergh after developing inside information about the crime. Fisher details how this teacher and youth leader, a "pillar of the community", somehow disturbed parents enough that they pulled their boys and girls from Condon's athletic and scouting groups in the Bronx. Condon behaved erratically and weirdly when he first confronted Hauptmann in a lineup, too. Investigators felt the men knew one another - and Condon expected to be arrested along with Hauptmann. And there is another overlooked fact: Condon's telephone number jotted on the wall of a secret cabinet in Hauptmann's garage, where the gold ransom notes were stashed. Curiouser and curiouser.

Fisher's book includes all these details, described accurately without conclusions -- in fact his conclusions don't fit a lot of the facts he presents. That's why I feel the book is a very good one -- the best I'm aware of by far.

Still there's no discussion of possible motives besides greed. For instance, Fisher doesn't examine the powerful enemies of Lindbergh's father, Rep. Augustus Lindbergh of Minnesota. He was a congressman from 1906-12 and opponent of the Rockefeller/Morgan Anglo-American banking and industrial interests that were seeking to create and control the Federal Reserve System, which is still owned and directed by them. The senior Lindbergh strongly opposed these powerful international bankers and monopolists and hampered their achievement of complete, governmentally sanctioned control over American credit, finance, and industry until well after World War I.

Interestingly, these same financial interests actually employed Charles A. Lindbergh after his heroic transatlantic crossing (he was hired by John D. Rockefeller Jr. to work at Rockefeller University). It's pretty obvious that the congressman's enemies -- British and American money power -- subsequently monitored the hero aviator's every move for the rest of his life. Furthermore these men knew more than a year in advance that the gold certificates of the Lindberg ransom would become traceable soon after the money was paid. How? Because Lindbergh's employers (among others in the US and Europe) were working on President Hoover to outlaw America's gold-backed currency and instead surrender the gold to the conspiracy as part of an American bankruptcy to the nation's central bank, the Federal Reserve System. (The directive to declare a state of emergency by proclamation and surrender US gold reserves came to Hoover from the President of the NY Federal Reserve bank -- the letter from John Corrigan survived and turned up in Hoover's presidential papers, and the courageous archivists of the Hoover Institution published it instead of suppressing it in the 1970s. Roosevelt obeyed the conspiracy the day he was inaugurated, of course.)

So, in this reader's mind, questions still remain. WHO ELSE besides Bruno Richard Hauptmann organized and executed the Lindbergh kidnap? Was the baby killed deliberately or accidentally? And what was their REAL motive?

Read this book for a clear and complete presentation of the facts, but then read more about the Lindbergh kidnap, investigations, and trial ... and wonder.