From Publishers Weekly

Noted historical true-crime expert Schechter (The Devil's Gentleman) traces the divergent paths of the Colt brothers in a saga that falls short of the author's usual high standards. Samuel Colt, born to a prosperous Connecticut family in 1814, was fascinated by weaponry from an early age and was determined to make a mark in the field. His older brother, John, drifted, until finally he settled in Manhattan as an accountant. Sam, who allegedly whittled his prototype of a revolving firearm while at sea, received foreign patents though American success was slower. But his life was shattered when, on September 24, 1841, John was arrested for the murder of Samuel Adams, whose decomposing body was found stuffed into a box in the hold of a ship bound for New Orleans. In a high-profile trial--witnesses testified that the financially pressed John bludgeoned Adams over a debt--John was convicted and sentences to hang, but in 1842 he was found in his cell with a knife in his chest. Despite the lively material and fascinating characters, Schechter fails to adequately explore the tragic irony of the situation wherein one brother revolutionizes a handheld killing machine and the other becomes a killer. 7 b&w illus.
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From

The nineteenth-century murder trial and subsequent sordid demise of John Colt would have been little noticed, except that Colt happened to be the older brother of Samuel Colt. Six years before the trial, Samuel had invented the revolver, and the use of “Judge Colt” became the stuff of western lore and legend. John had also been moderately successful as a writer and accountant, but he tended to be volatile and irresponsible. He was accused of bashing in the head of a Mr. Adams during an argument over a debt and then concealing the corpse in a shipping crate. The trial attracted great attention in New York. Despite an admirable effort by his defense attorney that suggeted self-defense, Colt was convicted. Hours before his scheduled execution, he was found dead in his cell, an apparent suicide. Schechter, a literature professor, has specialized in true-crime writing, and here he captures the early form of “media circus” that surrounded the trial, providing interesting and sometimes tantalizing tidbits concerning relations between the brothers. This is a well-done account of a “sensational” trial and its sad aftermath. --Jay Freeman