truepenny | UBC: Rule, Don't Look Behind You

Don't Look Behind You and Other True Cases (Crime Files, #15)

Don't Look Behind You and Other True Cases by Ann Rule

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

"North to Alaska": Puyallup WA 1978: The long-unsolved missing persons case of Joe Tarricone is solved when his bones are discovered buried in the backyard of a condemned house. A lengthy investigation eventually convicts his girlfriend Renee Curtiss and her adopted brother Nick Notaro (and their deceased mother) of murdering Tarricone, dismembering him and burying him.
"Too Late for the Fair": Des Moines WA 1962: Rule is a clear, descriptive writer, but she isn't usually atmospheric. This case is the exception. She describes the atmosphere of Bob Hansen's house vividly. (This case also made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up because Hansen also makes a cameo appearance in Green River, Running Red, as the "lonely farmer" who abducted a call girl and kept her imprisoned for three days in his barn. He wasn't the serial killer, but this story acts like a kind of hypertext link, expanding the background of that incident in a way that completely changes the reader's interpretation of it. Hansen wasn't, as the FBI profilers more or less dismissed him as, an eccentric but ultimately harmless man. He was an abusive father, an abusive husband, and a murderer who was much much better at disposing of his victims than Gary Ridgway. Joann Hansen is still missing.)
"The Case of the Deadly Giant": Echo Lake WA 1971: Paul Vinetti savagely murdered a woman because, he said, she made fun of him.
"The Most Frightening Crime of All": Edmonds WA 1976 and Seattle WA 1980: two serial rapists (all the names have been changed). Rule's purpose is to educate women in how to keep themselves safe(r). Not blame-the-victim thinking, just strategies to reduce risk. This sort of didacticism I do not mind.

There is no case in this collection called "Don't Look Behind You."

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