Vulgar Favors: Andrew Cunanan, Gianni Versace, and the Largest Failed Manhunt in U.S. History

Vanity Fair was Andrew Cunanan's favorite magazine, so there's a certain synergy to Maureen Orth's engrossing and meticulously researched account of Cunanan's 1997 cross-country killing spree, which left celebrated designer Gianni Versace and four others dead before Cunanan took his own life. Orth, a special correspondent for Vanity Fair and an award-winning investigative journalist, had just filed a story on the homicidal young poseur when Versace's murder grabbed headlines across the nation. As the media scrambled to make the connection between high-profile victim and shadowy assailant, it was Orth who broke the news that Cunanan claimed to have known the fashion superstar--perhaps more intimately than Versace's handlers were comfortable admitting publicly.

Vulgar Favors, Orth's first book, is the story of a monster obsessed with social climbing. From his earliest childhood, Cunanan's severely dysfunctional parents programmed him with a sense of entitlement but gave him no means of entrée into the glittering world of wealth and privilege he so desperately desired. At first, Cunanan's youthful, exotic good looks and magpie intelligence earned him access to the upper echelons of San Diego's fabulously decadent and closeted gay rich, but as drugs and dissolution exacted their toll, the doors closed tight and Cunanan's rage and frustration took a murderous bent. The most interesting parts of Orth's tale, however, are not the lurid details of depravity but the revelations on how Versace's celebrity status influenced the investigation into his murder. Even in death, it would appear, the rich are very different from you and me. --Patrizia DiLucchio