UBC: Rule, Lying in Wait

[truepenny]

Lying in Wait and Other True Cases by Ann Rule

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

• "The Baby Seller": Athens AL 1980: the abominable Jackie Sue Schut, child abuser, child pornographer, kidnapper, murderer: she murdered a young mother in Alabama, stole her newborn, then abandoned the child in a deserted field when she discovered his club foot. (He was rescued by a chance passing motorist.) She most likely abducted another young mother and her newborn, only to panic and send the child back via taxi when she (allegedly accidentally) murdered the mother. It seems only too likely those were not her only two victims.
  
  
• "Secrets of the Amorous Pizza Man": Whidbey Island WA 2012: meteorologist (of the straight-up scientific kind, not the TV weather report kind) meets a man in Antarctica, falls in love, marries him, and is murdered by him in Washington State after six years of marriage when she becomes inconvenient to him. So far as anyone knows, she had no idea he didn't love her as much as she loved him.
  
  
• "A Road Trip to Murder": Everett WA 2011: white supremacist ex-con and his white supremacist ex-con girlfriend murder his father, the stepmother he had never met before, and two perfect strangers, in an effort to get to Sacramento and "kill more Jews."
  
  
• "Murderous Epitaph for the Beautiful Runaway": Seattle WA 1977: young woman runs away from wealthy home in Maryland, ends up being raped & murdered in a seedy Seattle hotel.
  
  
• "Tracks of a Serial Rapist": reprint of Part II of "The Most Frightening Crime of All" from Don't Look Behind You and Other True Cases with the pseudonyms taken out and real names put in.
  
  
• "'Take a Lifer Home to Dinner . . . with Murder for Dessert!'": Tacoma WA 1972: another surreal dispatch from the early seventies; convict takes advantage of half-baked quasi-furlough program (for which he wasn't even eligible), runs, and kills a pawn-shop owner.
  
  This collection contains no case called "Lying in Wait."

View all my reviews

Comments

[redbird]

Overall, I'm glad you didn't read and review these while I was living in Washington. Yes, I realize that the focus on crimes there is because of where Rule was working/looking, and that state borders are arbitrary, but it's still disconcerting.

[girlpunksamurai.livejournal.com]

I am seriously, and ridiculously addicted to your book reviews. And I just started my Spring semester so this not smart O.o lol

Out of curiosity, why only 3 of 5 stars?

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

It just wasn't as good as some of her other collections.