He is a Professor Emeritus at Queens College, City University of New York where he taught classes in American literature and myth criticism for forty-two years.
Using primary sources such as newspaper clippings and court records, he supplies thorough documentation of every case he profiles, while still managing to create compelling narratives and fully fleshed-out characters.
Examining everything from Victorian murder ballads to the productions of the nineteenth-century Grand Guignol, the book makes the somewhat contrarian argument that today's popular entertainment is actually less violent than the gruesome diversions of the supposedly halcyon past.
[4][6] In his 1973 article, "Kali on Main Street: The Rise of the Terrible Mother in America", Schechter uses the phrase "horror-porn," which is cited by the Oxford English Dictionary as the first printed appearance of the word "porn" in its now-common figurative meaning: "As the second element in compounds: denoting written or visual material that emphasizes the sensuous or sensational aspects of a non-sexual subject, appealing to its audience in a manner likened to the titillating effect of pornography.
PW called Schechter's book The Devil's Gentleman "a riveting tale of murder, seduction and tabloid journalism run rampant in New York not so different from today".