Sandi K W. (Sandiinmississippi) reviewed on 1/8/2015 + 265 more book reviews

Wish I could give this a higher rating as the crime was quite fascinating.

But the author wanders between his experiences as a journalist, his personal stuff, various periods in the killer's life, the victim's problems, historical and geographical info - everything is there but without any sense of organization or time span. Countless times I had to backtrack to see where we even were time wise. The writing is amateurish and vocabulary very limited. Often he uses the same phrase twice in one paragraph, and evidently not for effect. He tells us that a character on the edge of the story sinks into a cycle of alcohol abuse and in the very next sentence, with no bridging information, says 'he worked hard to maintain his sobriety.' Everywhere in the book the same events were repeated several times. It was as though the whole tale was actually running in a tv show and after each commercial we'd see a little repeat or run-up to the same part of the episode.

The character of the killer, Sheila LaBarre, is well-developed and there is a lot of detail about things she did which should have foreshadowed her final collapse of reason. But the only good thing I could say about this particular telling of the tale is that Flynn did evidently have access to a lot of the story.

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