Notwithstanding the remarks from Publishers Weekly that the trial moved too slowly and the witnesses rambled too much for this story to be of interest to any but true-crime buffs, it is actually quite remarkable that there isn't more interest today in the saga of Levi Weeks and the mysterious death of his lover, Gulielma Sands.

That these incidents took place long ago (the turn of the 19th century) shouldn't matter - people are still debating the 15th century death of the Princes in the Tower of London.

The story of the death of Gulielma Sands and of Levi Weeks's trial has a quaint touch of old New York about it, occurring at a time when farm animals were routinely transported up and down Broadway, not long after the charter that led to the formation of the New York Stock Exchange was entered into under a peach tree on Wall Street.

The circumstances of Miss Sands's death were quite mysterious; the testimony of the witnesses is quite dramatic at times (however much it might sometimes have rambled), and Levi Weeks himself was represented by two of the most prominent attorneys in the state of New York - none other than Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr (obviously before the ill-fated duel).

Surely, these are features which should have stimulated and maintained interest in the case, and yet there is little today.

My own interest in this case stems from a short treatment of it given by the great early 20th century true crime writer Edmund Pearson, who lovingly collected true crime stories as an epicure might collect bottles of wine.

It made me eager to read more, but this book by Estelle Fox Klieger is the only full-length treatment that I could find.

And Ms. Klieger's treatment of the subject is certainly a worthy one. I am a little disappointed with its dry scholarliness, which does not demonstrate the same sort of tender loving care toward its subject that Pearson's treatment did.

But that's a minor objection to what is otherwise an excellent work. Given the format of a full-length book in which to flesh out her subject, Ms. Klieger is able to give us an even fuller description of the history of old New York and of the social context in which the two lovers behaved and of the political context which caused Hamilton and Burr to join forces for the defense on this occasion.

There are several versions of what happened in the trial, and Ms. Klieger is able to rely upon the Coleman transcript, which is believed to be the most accurate.

The trial lasted a couple of days and went into the night virtually non-stop (there was one break for sleep, and what the participants did for food and other basic needs, no one seems to know).

It must have been a laborious task to pour over the transcript and edit it in such a way to enable the reader to progress through the story without missing anything vital. Ms. Klieger seems to have done a good job in this, though only someone else familiar with the full transcript could know for sure.

The expurgated testimony is liberally interspersed with her commentary, as it must necessarily be, in order to provide proper context and transition.

I'm also somewhat disappointed with Ms. Klieger's treatment of the "candle incident" (which, of course, reportedly took place in the evening while the trial was taking place by candlelight).

The "candle incident" is a legend associated with this trial. And assuming that it actually took place, it is easily the most dramatic moment of the trial and is described in biographies written by partisans of both Hamilton and Burr, all of whom give credit to their respective subjects for having initiated it.

However, Ms. Klieger declares flatly that it never took place because there is no notation of it in the Coleman transcript.

But perhaps the legend and the reference to it in the biographies of the attorneys can't be disregarded so lightly. Perhaps Coleman simply did not know how to record this bizarre incident in the format of an official transcript. Or perhaps there were other reasons why he chose not to record it.

Pearson was not so certain that the story didn't have a factual basis, and Ms. Klieger might be guilty of a surfeit of dryness in disregarding the story so readily. Perhaps her book could have used just a touch of Pearsonian romanticism and humor.

But again, that isn't a major criticism of a very fine book, and some wonderful contemporary prints of New York and of the personages that participated in this incident round it out nicely.

Who killed Gulielma Sands? Or did she make away with herself, as the defense suggested? No one knows, and while Ms. Klieger doesn't purport to provide the answer to us, I sense that she has her own idea. Perhaps other readers will come away with an impression different from mine. But what I perceive as her personal opinion is an undercurrent that runs through the book, which doesn't detract from the objectivity of her analysis.

This is an excellent book with which to get acquainted with what should be a classical true-life murder mystery - if only there was interest in it out there to begin with.