Lust Killer

I recently watched "Mindhunter" on Netflix, and one of the killers the main characters interviewed was Jerry Brudos, who murdered four young women in Oregon in the late 1960s. Brudos was an odd one, a married man with two young kids and a shoe fetish that started when he was five. The cops caught him making phone calls to sorority houses, trying to get someone to meet him for a date. Shockingly, this ploy actually worked a few times. Brudos confessed to the killings in great detail and the police found all sorts of gory evidence at his house. His poor wife was humiliated and vilified, she actually had to stand trial herself when she was accused of being his accomplice. Brudos pleaded guilty, saving the taxpayers the cost of a trial at least. His wife changed her name and never saw him again. It was a quick read (my copy was large print, so that helped).

The Night Window; A Bloody Business

The finale to Dean Koontz's Jane Hawk series did not disappoint. I don't want to spoil it, but suffice to say I'm glad Koontz isn't like Stephen King and doesn't need to kill off *every* likable character :)
Jane is still on the run, hiding out, trying to stay one step ahead of the Arcadians, but the noose is tightening. She's in danger, her friends are in danger, her son is in danger. It was very, very tense but I like how it ended, really the only way it could have. I enjoyed the whole series.

Dylan Struzan met Vincent Alo when he was an old man, retired in Florida, and spent hours listening to his stories about the mob and how their influence and power grew during Prohibition. He made her promise not to publish the stories until after he died, and she kept her promise. It was a fictionalized account of nonfiction. It was pretty good, but a bit long, it could have been shorter and still packed as much of a punch.

The Five; Cari Mora

I enjoyed Hallie Rubenhold's "The Five". Rather than recount the murders of Jack the Ripper, which have been done a million times, she sought to breathe life into the five women he is accused of murdering and dispel the myth that they were "just prostitutes". Only two of them were actually on record as sex workers, the other three were unfortunate women who lost everything due to circumstances and alcoholism. Three of them were married at one point, three of them had children. They were daughters, sisters, mothers, wives, and friends who had the misfortune of being attacked by Jack the Ripper. It was very interesting and of course very heartbreaking.

I was so disappointed by "Cari Mora" by Thomas Harris. I mentally prepared myself for it not to be as good as his Hannibal Lecter books, but wow, this was just awful. The font was huge, I thought I had accidentally gotten a large print, but no, that was just how it was and it was short, so the characters were very thin and the whole story wasn't very fleshed out. Basically a group of shady characters are working at the former home of mobster Pablo Escobar, trying to open a safe that contains millions. Another group of shady characters is trying to beat them to it, and a lovely woman named Cari Mora is caught in the middle of it all, just trying to escape with her life. It had the makings of a great story, but it just didn't pan out.

White

I've always enjoyed Bret Easton Ellis's fiction, and I was curious about this work of nonfiction, especially after reading the reviews in the journals by librarians (spoiler alert: they hated it). I, however, cannot remember a time when I enjoyed a book of essays so much. He brilliantly sums up his thoughts (and he's very, very clear about this: they are his *opinions*, not facts, something I feel like many otherwise intelligent people have failed to keep in mind in recent years) on a myriad of subjects, including Hollywood, politics, Charlie Sheen, and many more. I couldn't put it down.

A Time to Scatter Stones

I loved "A Walk Among the Tombstones" by Lawrence Block, which I think is the only Matthew Scudder book I've read. This novella was super disappointing. At least it was short, so I didn't waste too much time on it. Matthew is enjoying his retirement with his wife, Elaine, who is an ex-prostitute. Elaine brings home a young woman named Ellen, who is trying to leave the business but is being stalked by an ex-client. She's not sure what to do and is asking for Matthew's help. The whole thing was just weird and preposterous. I love Block's writing style, that was the only part of the book I enjoyed, but the plot was just a hot mess.

The Sun is Also a Star; Anna of Kleve

I liked Nicola Yoon's "Everything, Everything", and a colleague at work said this one was pretty good too, so I gave it a shot. I liked it more than I thought I would at first. It's Natasha's last day in America: her family is here from Jamaica illegally and they are being deported. She's determined to find a way to stay. Meanwhile, Daniel is the son of Korean immigrants who are want him to go to Yale and be a doctor. Daniel is a romantic boy who writes poetry and falls in love with Natasha at first sight. They spend the day together, Daniel trying to make Natasha fall in love with him and Natasha resisting it. I liked the ending, I don't want to spoil it, but it was happy without being ridiculously unrealistic.

I've been enjoying Alison Weir's Tudor Queens series. Anne of Cleves (or Anna of Kleve, as Weir styles her) is the least known of Henry's wives, so Weir went fanciful and imagined a secret past: Anna becomes pregnant at 14 from a cousin and goes into seclusion, giving birth to a boy she gives away to be raised by a sword maker. Years later, she is sent to England to marry King Henry and finds him obese and disagreeable. After their wedding night, he refuses to try to consummate the marriage, telling his advisers that he judged her not to be a maid based on how flabby she was. On this, Weir decided to hang the illicit pregnancy. No offense, but I've never been pregnant and I'm very flabby. I also find it really hard to believe if King Henry *really* thought she wasn't a maid that he didn't raise a bigger fuss about it. It's not like he was the "suffer in silence" type. It's nice to imagine poor Anna had SOME happiness in her life, but even Weir admits she probably did not have children.

Furious Hours

"Furious Hours" was an interesting book. In the 1970s, people around the Reverend Willie Maxwell kept dropping like flies. Curiously enough, he had life insurance policies on all of them.
Hmmm...
Police couldn't prove anything, the causes of death were inconclusive, but friends and relatives were getting frustrated at how he kept getting away with murder. So one of them killed him at the funeral of his stepdaughter, in front of 300 witnesses. Ironically enough, the same lawyer who defended Maxwell defended his murderer, and got him off on an insanity plea.
Harper Lee was struggling to write a second book, a follow up to "To Kill a Mockingbird". When she heard about the trial, she traveled to the town near her hometown and watched, interviewed people, did research and compiled notes. Everyone thought her second book would be forthcoming, but it never appeared. It's a shame, I would have loved to have read what she did with this story.

Love Letter Life; Killer Across the Table; Murder by the Book

I love "Little People, Big World", I've been watching it since the beginning, so I got to see Jeremy and Audrey's love story unfold (well, the bits they allowed to air). Their love story is very sweet, and the book was full of Christian advice on how to date and marry and make your marriage work. It was a little bit too Christian for me, but they still had some solid advice.

I have to admit, I was disappointed with this one, which surprised me, I was really looking forward to it. I normally love John Douglas's books, I've read almost all of them. In this one he presented about a half a dozen different killers he's interviewed, talking about what makes them tick. It was just very flat, maybe because most of them I had never heard of. The only thing I really liked was when he played audio cassettes of one of the killers raping and torturing a victim, one of the people listening who had been staunchly anti-death penalty changed his mind, saying he had no idea such sick and twisted people existed. Clearly he does not read as much true crime as I do.

I was also surprised by "Murder by the Book", because I really enjoyed it and it wasn't at all what I thought it was going to be about. In 1839, Victorian London was gripped by Jack Sheppard fever. A book by William Harrison Ainsworth that romanticized a thief from the 1770s, it captured the imagination of the lower and upper class alike and inspired numerous plays and songs. When a minor nobleman was brutally murdered in his sleep, his valet was arrested and charged with the crime. He later claimed he was inspired by the book. It was a short, quick read but very nicely told and she had a few snarky asides which were fun.