This book is poorly written, yet the subject is fascinating. The love Rick Davey has for himself often brings the narrative to an abrupt halt. But the worst part is that Mr. Davey is so intent on finding a solution to the mystery of Little Miss 1565 and proving himself to be a wonderful investigator that he twists the facts to make them fit his theory. I didn't discover this until I read another book on the Hartford Fire. Mr. Davey pronounces the identity of the the mysterious little girl. What he doesn't mention is that dental records disprove his identification. This really is revisionist history of the worst kind because a family was caused to suffer to assauge Mr. Davey's ego. If you are interested in this story, I recommend reading The Circus Fire by Stewart O'Nan. It is better investigated, written and much more comprehensive. It also has the merits of being much more factual than this book.

The inclusion of Davey's personal history was unnecessary & stopped the momentum of the book. I liked O'Nan's book about the circus fire better...he told a more complete story of the fire and the victims. However, A Matter of Degree provided an excellent account of the fire, the investigation in 1944, and Davey's investigation decades later. Davey's arguments about Segee's guilt were convincing.

The original investigation was flawed, and the City of Hartford's/State of Connecticut's efforts to impede Davey's efforts (calls to FBI) to protect the city from liability are shocking. Hopefully victims & survivors are taking advantage of this book to hold the city accountable.

Davey appears to believe that his proving arson relieves the circus from any responsibility and that the 5 employees should not have served prison terms. Yes, arson caused the fire, and yes, the city of Hartford should also have been held responsible. However, the circus was also to blame (waterproofing the tent with highly flammable parrifin & gas), reducing their insurance, not having hoses that fit hydrants, etc. Serving less than a year in prison is no where close to what the victims & survivors suffered. Davey doesn't address the circus's testimonial that they had attempted to find other ways of waterproofing their tents. O'Nan provides in this book proof that other ways of waterproofing (non-flammable) were in existence at the time, used by other circuses, and war efforts did not prevent material availability.

This book is both intriguing and infuriating at the same time.

Intriguing because of the light shed on the cause of the Hartford circus fire of 1944, and the resolution of at least one mystery that came out of that disaster, and irritating beyond belief because of the unnecessary melodrama used to describe the actions of one of its authors and the repetition of some of the material. That one of the co-authors is the key player in the most recent developments about the fire shouldn't have allowed the authors to occasionally lean on purple writing. Cheers for the investigator blend with boos the lapses in the writing.

The fire was tragic on its own, the actions of the investigator commendable on their own, without the overwriting that describes investigator Rick Davey's long quest to solve a mystery that he'd grown up hearing about and later felt compelled to solve.

That the pieces were all there, waiting to be assembled, is no knock on his desire to find them all, put them together and reach a conclusion that finally was accepted by those remaining.

That many knew, or should have known, key details that could have led to an arrest, the identification of the mystery victim, a more equitable punishment of those responsible for the disaster and so on, should be a lesson to us all today. As the country tries to assess events related to Sept.11, questions of building security and design, fair distribution of compensation, U.S. intelligence and much more, I'd like to hope we've learned the lessons of the dangers of secrecy and failure of many to take responsibility for their actions. We shall see.

This account may leave you wishing for yet one more book on this topic before the fire's survivors fade away. Most of the key official players are long gone from the scene but there's still more to be said about the fire that claimed 168 lives.

In contrast with one other book on the same topic, this book is written more clearly and from an investigator's viewpoint. Thus it has less detail about the hellish experiences of the victims and more focus on attempting to explain the fire's origins, possible perpetrator and the identity of one mysterious victim.

As briefly as possible, and eliminating the utterly unnecessary melodrama about the life of the fire investigator who co-authored this book, here are the main details about the disaster:

Several thousand people attended the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus in Hartford, Conn., on July 6, 1944, a fire broke out on the Big Top's canvas, patrons trying to flee were trapped and either burned or crushed to death. Most of the victims were quickly identified, with a handful of exceptions, one of them a little girl who came to be known as Little Miss 1565. Nearly as speedily, several circus employees were sentenced to relatively short jail terms for having failed to meet certain safety regulations.

Anyone who lived in Hartford in the 1950s through the 1970s will remember the investigators who, each year, placed flowers on the mystery girl's grave, and the annual recounting of the disaster. They'd also remember the emotional resistance when, in the 1970s, a circus proposed returning to Hartford for a Big Top show. The feelings of Hartford residents ran deep, very deep, even 30 years later. What didn't run as deep, apparently, was a desire to find out just what had caused the fire, or the resolve to identify the mystery girl. Sometimes people just don't want to know. That no one had written a book about this tragedy until just the last few years is stunning to an outsider.

While on a private quest to answer the long-standing question about the identity of 1565, Davey began digging through State Library records and, to his credit, uncovered a trail that led directly to a hired hand working for the circus. The suspect had a long history of arson, and had confessed, a few years after the disaster, to setting the Hartford fire. The tale of why Connecticut authorities failed to take the man's confession seriously-or rather, to move against him-is justifiably a big part of this book. Someone appears to have let someone else get away with murder but unfortunately, despite Davey's best efforts, the reason is unresolved beyond the belief that it was nothing but a coverup, meant to explain the initial erroneuous findings. Also valuably reported by Davey is the extent of statewide personal and political contacts that sent the circus men to jail while keeping city politicians out of harm's way or even having to answer questions about how the disaster occurred. And, no surprise, Davey was left hanging out in the wind once his findings came to light.
His recounting of the family of the mysterious girl and how each coped with the tragedy of dual losses that day are heartbreaking.

Unfortunately, many of the officials who might have been forced to answer for their failure to act, and apparent decision to quickly close the case, are long dead. Equally incomprehensible is the failure of contemporary authorities to act on Davey's findings, because they are definitely convincing, even to one who initially doubted the mystery had been solved 50 years after the fire.

Particularly valuable is Davey's obvious hard work at uncovering the records of earlier investigations that could have led to an arrest. In fact, one of the surprises of this book is that some of this information was known years ago. But a)he's the only one who appears to have done this legwork b)he's done a good job telling us how he did it, which invites the question as to why no one else ever has.

So, read this book, but skip the prologue, which borders on the ludicrous because of the writing, as important as it might be to Davey, and Chapter 16, which is an account of Davey's childhood, and totally unnecessary to the telling of this story. Though he is the key player in the reopening of this case, he doesn't belong in the story this way. Where were the editors?