Voted "Best in New Hampshire" by New Hampshire Magazine and was a featured segment on WCVB-TV Boston's Chronicle. "Petrie vividly re-creates the circumstances and aftermath of an early 20th-century murder in this true-crime book. Exhaustive detail and flawless re-creations make for real suspense in this nonfiction tale." - Kirkus Reviews “Petrie expertly puts details into historical context and annotates each chapter with newspaper and court documentation. Written in 2000 but even more intriguing as the 100th anniversary of the crime approaches, this thorough account will appeal to fans of true crime.”- Publisher’s Weekly This second printing of "Perfection To A Fault" is the exact same story that was so favorably reviewed by Publisher's Weekly and Kirkus Reviews, among others. A new cover design and a much requested Photo Gallery were added, as the 100th anniversary of the story approaches. This book is the non-fiction account of the events which encompassed a murder and trial at the turn of the century in Ossipee, New Hampshire. When Florence Small's smoldering body rose to the surface of the basement water, local folks immediately suspected her husband of the crime. Frederick Small was an outsider, a Boston man, who had moved to Ossipee Lake to semi-retire. There was a deep distrust of "city fellas up there behind the Ossipees," in 1916 and perhaps this suspicion was warranted. But how could Frederick have been responsible for a murder and a fire that happened 7 hours after he had left for Boston on a business trip? The sensational trial that followed was unlike any previously experienced in Carroll County. And although everybody from the Boston area to Portland, Maine, had an opinion, nobody anticipated the decision the jury would reach. The unrest on the ill-fated property remained even in 1956, when Anna Foley's unsuspecting son and daughter-in-law felt the effects of the events of 1916 one August night while vacationing on the property. The Manchester Leader and Evening Union newspaper wrote in anticipation of a verdict, "If the state has proved its case, it has developed a new type of New Hampshire criminal. It has brought forth a cool, daring, mechanical and chemical genius, a man who scorned the ordinary forms of murder but who brought forth to the mountains of this quiet village a science which would baffle a Craig Kennedy or Sherlock Holmes. The jury of his peers will decide whether Frederick L. Small is that man or the normal individual who has been made a victim of circumstances and is being tried for a crime which he never committed and of which he had no knowledge." "...I can honestly say that Janice has done a wonderful job, and historically accurate, in portraying the persons and events..." -- Barry Hill - President of the Ossipee Historical Society "...a fascinating case, and Janice had an unusual and somewhat eerie connection to the story...it is riveting and suspenseful..." -- Ossipee Historical Society, Summer 2000 Newsletter "Petrie decided to research the source of the haunting. The result is an engaging ghost story, murder mystery, courtroom drama." -- New Hampshire Magazine, July, 2001 Rebecca Rule- Best of New Hampshire Issue "Petrie vividly re-creates the circumstances and aftermath of an early 20th-century murder in this true-crime book. A cottage on the shore of New Hampshire's Lake Ossipee seems an unlikely location for a grisly murder, but Petrie notes that there might have been an unrest on that piece of property that wouldn't disappear with the passage of time. She cleverly opens not with the crime itself but with new owners arriving in 1955. Sensing an unearthly chill as they entered the cottage, they never returned to the place after their first visit and quickly sold it. Everyone in the gossipy community knew that Florence Small had died in a suspicious house fire on September 28, 1916... As Petrie chronicles that momentous day as well as Small's trial... , she enlivens her story with excellent dialogue and scene-setting. She discusses the case in great detail, often drawing on newspaper stories, but the facts never become too overwhelming for readers. On the day in question, Petrie writes, Small and a friend traveled to Boston to broker insurance sales; that evening, he received a message that his home had burned down with Florence inside. Small acted suitably distraught, but the next day, the circumstances looked too perfect. His satchel contained important documents one wouldn't want to lose in a fire; he'd taken out a large joint life insurance policy; and he had a history of domestic violence. By gradually revealing these salient pieces of background information, Petrie's pacey prose puts readers in the same position as the investigators. It's intriguing to learn how advanced forensic science was at the time: from Florence's stomach contents, for example, experts could pinpoint the hour of her death... Exhaustive detail and flawless re-creations make for rea