From The Telegraph:
For J Randy Taraborrelli, it is not the secret love affairs with the Kennedys, or FBI surveillance reports, or mysteries surrounding her death that fascinate him, but the relationship between Marilyn Monroe and her mother, Gladys Baker, who spent much of her adult life in and out of institutions, diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic. This fractured relationship was the central relationship of Monroe’s life, he argues, and its implications were horrendous. “The often heart-wrenching war she fought with her own mind has never, until now, been properly examined and presented,” he insists.
No one can accuse Taraborrelli of a lack of diligence in his research, or of failing to challenge existing assumptions, but he also pays reverential tribute to earlier biographers with many of whose conclusions he none the less disagrees. For example, he praises the two books of James Haspiel, who knew Marilyn personally, but declines to mention Haspiel’s theory that Robert Kennedy smothered her to death.