My fourth Rule book and it’s just as well researched and written as the others, but there was so much focus on the explicit nature of the k2.5 Stars
My fourth Rule book and it’s just as well researched and written as the others, but there was so much focus on the explicit nature of the killer’s sex crimes. I understood he was a very sexually driven killer, but the page after page descriptions of assault and the terrible things he said to his victims made me very uncomfortable. ...more
Full disclosure— I read this while researching for a podcast I’m part of.
This is absolutely one of the longest, most infuriating books I’ve ever read.Full disclosure— I read this while researching for a podcast I’m part of.
This is absolutely one of the longest, most infuriating books I’ve ever read. The plot absolutely inches by and the characters make insane choices to the point you feel you can’t keep.
But it all feels painfully raw? It inches by like life and the story careens towards an I falcon able ending? Like you somehow wonder how you got there two-thirds of the way in, but you just read every painstaking detail.
The case this is built on is one you WANT to make sense, but it really remains senseless. Even after examining every detail? That’s my take away after 1000+ pages anyway. ...more
By reading this book, I was doing TWO things I always said I’d never do.
1. Consume any media about Ted Bundy
I haven’t seen the Netflix docume5 Stars
By reading this book, I was doing TWO things I always said I’d never do.
1. Consume any media about Ted Bundy
I haven’t seen the Netflix documentary. I haven’t seen the Zac Efron movie. I have skipped over podcast episodes. I’ve heard too many stories about people talking about him being attractive or how he was known for being some type of hot bad-boy.
I don’t like that a man who caused such pain and brutalized so many women is remembered and sometimes revered while his victims often go nameless and faceless. I just never wanted to add go that.
2. Read anything by Ann Rule
My grandmother was obsessed with Ann Rule. She owned every one of her books (sometimes in paperback AND hardback) and displayed them all proudly on a shelf in her living room. When I was young this disturbed me, I couldn’t understand why someone would read so many books about murder and why they’d keep the books like trophies.
Even as I’ve grown older and dipped my toe in the true crime world— first by listening to podcasts such as Serial, then CrimeJunkies, Dateline, and then on to books— I avoided Ann Rule. Though often cited as the “queen of True Crime” her books remained associated with my initial aversion to the genre and all the morbid exploration I thought it contained.
Well, here I am, eating my crow. Because I loved this book— not because of Bundy, but because of Ann Rule.
This book is not one that portrayed Bundy as any misunderstood or poorly-loved bad boy. It is not one that harps on shocks and gory details. It’s not even one that focuses soley on the absurdity of a crime writer discovering one of her friends is a serial killer. This book is Ann Rule’s catharsis after discovering she and many others were betrayed by someone they trusted.
Rule looks intensely at the lives of Bundy’s victims and their personalities and goals. Instead of relying only on gruesome captivating details, Rule writes about the tragedy of this man and the hurt he caused. And instead of shying away from her personal involvement, she looks at these tragedies honestly and through the lens of her own complicated emotions.
There are times when Rule seems to defend her decisions to remain in contact with Bundy or to write about him. There are also times you question her support or how she could still believe in him at all. But to me that just feels true? This is what she experienced— mistakes, complications and all.
Overall:
This book is true crime and it is about Bundy, but it looks at these events personally instead of exploitatively or to somehow redeem a monster....more
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