Sam V. (samuel) reviewed There But For the Grace of God: Survivors of the 20th Century's Infamous Serial Killers on
Helpful Score: 7
A product of my culture, I've been morbidly fascinated by serial killers from a very young age. As chance would have it, Dahmer's last murder attempt happened on my tenth birthday, and I remember reading about it a few years later in a book called The Milwaukee Murders. So when I saw this book on the shelf, my interests were again piqued.
I have to say I can't give the best review. I was hoping for detailed depictions from the survivors. Instead, each chapter (one for each survivor) begins with some local trivia, Rosen setting the scene for his meeting with the survivors, an extremely brief run-down of the serial killer's victims and/or MO and finally a brief description of how the survivor got away. Truth be told, he didn't even meet face-to-face with all the survivors as some of them couldn't be found.
All in all, the actual stories of the survivors are brief and require little more than a few pages each. The book is written in a very simplistic manner, making it an easy read for anyone, but I was put-off by Rosen's constant judgements and assignments of "the good guys" and "the bad guys" and his application of the word "evil." It made the read feel preachy at times.
But if you're looking for a brief intro to serial killer true crime, this book is definitely a good place to start and for that it might very well reserve a place on my bookshelf.
I have to say I can't give the best review. I was hoping for detailed depictions from the survivors. Instead, each chapter (one for each survivor) begins with some local trivia, Rosen setting the scene for his meeting with the survivors, an extremely brief run-down of the serial killer's victims and/or MO and finally a brief description of how the survivor got away. Truth be told, he didn't even meet face-to-face with all the survivors as some of them couldn't be found.
All in all, the actual stories of the survivors are brief and require little more than a few pages each. The book is written in a very simplistic manner, making it an easy read for anyone, but I was put-off by Rosen's constant judgements and assignments of "the good guys" and "the bad guys" and his application of the word "evil." It made the read feel preachy at times.
But if you're looking for a brief intro to serial killer true crime, this book is definitely a good place to start and for that it might very well reserve a place on my bookshelf.
