Thursday, October 07, 2004

Book Review

Good lord, I've actually finished a book! And a book whose target audience is the above 10 crowd. :o) I haven't read a book in about a year. I love to read, it's just very hard to get uninterrupted reading time these days.

I read a book that I've had for several years, just sitting in a drawer, brand new and unread. I read Ann Rule's 'The Stranger Beside Me' about Ted Bundy. It's an easy read and goes pretty fast. Some critics have said that Ann Rule is the best true crime author. I have to disagree. I have read better. This wasn't a BAD book, but it wasn't a great book. The beginning of the book was a bit slow and the parts about her seemed a bit self indulgent and pompous. I suppose that's just how ex-cop true crime writers come off when they write about cases that directly involve themselves. My favorite true crime writer is John Douglas a former FBI profiler who helped solve hundreds of gruesome crimes, and he is very much arrogant and pompous, but his writing is compelling and full of detail and insight. Ann Rule is no John Douglas. Her involvement with Bundy is from working twice a week with him on a suicide hotline for maybe a year. They became friends but in no way would I ever characterize the relationship she describes as CLOSE. After she leaves the crisis center her contact with Bundy is basically a couple of Christmas parties and a Christmas card. It isn't until Bundy is incarcerated over a year later in Utah that Bundy begins to correspond with Rule on a more frequent basis through letters and phone calls. The book has some intensely boring parts where Rule feels compelled to give detailed descriptions and back ground about certain investigators and police people she knows personally. I guess she did that to bolster her image as a former cop/great crime writer with 'contacts', but I found it a waste of space in the novel and tended to glaze over or just skip over those parts.

I was somewhat disappointed with Rule's description of the crimes committed, it was almost as if she was afraid of being too gruesome. In saying that I'm not implying that I was looking for something horrible and gruesome, I suppose that after reading so many John Douglas books and other cut and dry true crime things I had expected more from her. I had already read about the crimes committed by Bundy and felt she was kind of glossing things over, maybe because she truly wanted to believe that Bundy was innocent of all the atrocities described.

Rule's personal involvement in the novel was at times nauseating and irritating. It became less so as the novel progressed and she could provide unique insight and perspective. Not so much into Bundy himself, I don't feel she knew Bundy even a quarter as well as she would like to think she did, but into the actual trial of Bundy. Since she corresponded with Bundy she would hear of his legal wrangling going on behind the scenes. Due to her 'special' status as a crime writer AND as a 'close' associate with Bundy she got a press pass to his trial. Her description of the trial and the press were the actual GOLD in this novel.

Through out the novel she repeatedly implies that she can not completely believe in Bundy's guilt or innocents - at the end she admits that she completely believes he is guilty. After this book was first finished in 1986 and published she came back in 1989 and wrote about 100 more pages where she chronicles Bundy's years on the Florida Death Row and the legal wrangling that went on for 9 years. Again she falls into a self indulgent, self important tone. Ugh. But her insider knowledge and insight into the last days of Bundy and his confession were again GOLD.

Not a great book, but not awful.

The book I'm very interested in reading now is one mentioned in the book by Rule. It's written by Bundy's long time girlfriend (Liz Kendall is her pen name) and is FUCKING HARD to get a hold of. I've looked online for the book and have yet to find it under $43 and some as high as $200!!! I searched to see if my library had a copy of the book and of course they do not. I'll just have to keep looking.

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