The Secret Lives of Dentists

Violent, carnal, and profane. Not how you''d expect pretty, peaceful Minneapolis to be portrayed during Eisenhower''s somnambulant 1950s. But the City of Lakes was also the ''anti-Semitism capital of America. '' Sexual predators, pornographers, and backstreet Romeos were on the prowl, and ill-tempered cops, haunted by brutal World War II experiences, weren''t reluctant to thump the poor sap who rubbed them the wrong way.   In 1955, Minneapolis was also a magnet for small-town girls who flocked to the big city desperate for work, love, and adventure - not always in that order. But Teresa Hickman, of Tiny Dollar, North Dakota, was a special case. She was beguiling, promiscuous, and, on a chilly April morning, lying dead along an abandoned trolley track in a Southside neighborhood. She''d been strangled. Could the killer have been, among the many men drawn to her like flies to honey, Dr. H. David Rose, a middle-aged dentist with no criminal history? There''s no forensic evidence or credible witnesses tying him to her murder. Yet the police, including a pair of obsessive investigators with lethal secrets of their own, seem to agree that a Jewish dentist would likely get them a murder conviction in this town at this time. Small wonder that Rose''s spectacular trial and shocking aftermath will mesmerize the Upper Midwest like few crime sagas before or since.