I remember a time when I would tear through an Ann Rule like nobody's business. I don't know what has happened to her writing. This book felt like a chore to me and I was glad to see it end. Also, I don't care for her needlessly inserting herself into a story. In one of the stories, she mentions REPEATEDLY that her children attended school with the missing woman's children. This is NOT relevant, IMO, especially since she didn't know the missing woman, the children weren't friends, and she didn't even know anything about the missing woman's case until years later. I guess I just became less of a fan after reading The Stranger Beside Me and saw how hard she tried to make a story where there really wasn't one. I want to like her books, I do. But, she needs to write the stories and not insert herself into them. ( )

Crime

I like true crime books. This one was okay. I would have rated it better but the last two selections were on rape. My own personal history makes reading those selections very difficult. I do like when they get caught though. I especially appreciate good police work.

One of the selections was on spousal abuse. Also hard to read. I tend to like my true crime a little more police procedural and a little less focusing on the horrific worlds people are forced to live through. ( )

Kept me riveted to the end - classic Ann Rule - a definite page turner! Definitely a five star book! ( )

I ended up really annoyed with this one. Honestly I thought that Rule just threw a bunch of stories together and the second story should have been cut from this in its entirety. It becomes a long meandering story about a man who in all probability killed his wife, but there was no resolution to the case. Some of the other stories in this volume I have read in other Rule books so I did feel a bit cheated after I got past the first two stories.

The first story in this one is about a man who I think based on the way the story is written, seemed to be harassing a young woman who was not interested in him romantically anymore. I definitely don't think that is a reason to murder him. But something else seemed to be going on in this story, and it didn't make any sense to me that he was murdered since the murderer didn't seem to get anything out of it besides the guy leaving her alone in the future. The story was honestly not that interesting and I found it really boring.

The second story is about a man who it appears murdered his wife after she filed for divorce. Then Rule follows the family through the years. I honestly think that a good portion of the story could have just been cut. There is no reason why this story needed to be as long as it was since we don't get any resolution to the case. And Rule even goes so far to say that a woman who is cleaning the home for sale may be a sensitive and can feel the anger in the house the deceased murderer lived in before he died.

The next few stories were short and not that great. I realized after the fact that one of the stories was one I had read in another volume and so I don't know why it got repeated in this volume again. ( )