Smoke, Mirrors, and Murder (Ann Rule's Crime Files) - Softcover

Ann Rule is a former Seattle policewoman and the author of more than two dozen New York Times bestsellers. She is a certified instructor for police training seminars and lectures frequently to law enforcement officers, prosecutors, and forensic science organizations, including the FBI. For more than two decades, she has been a powerful advocate for victims of violent crime. A graduate of the University of Washington, she holds a Ph.D. in Humane Letters from Willamette University. She lives near Seattle and can be contacted through her website AnnRules.com.

Bestseller Rule looks at marriages gone bad in her latest volume of true-crime case files. Stories include "The Minister's Wife," about a woman convicted of shooting her husband in 2006, and "The Painter's Wife," an amazing tale of two strangers kidnapped by a hardened criminal. The bulk of the book is taken up by "The Deputy's Wife," the sad tale of a once-promising young police officer, Bill Jensen, who eventually took out a contract on his own family. It's a good yarn, full of horrifying twists, but at 150 pages can get repetitive. For those not used to it, Rule's fondness for potboiler prose-"Their marriage had spun like a colorful top...Now as it wound down slower and slower, Sue could see the pattern of lies"-can also annoy. Many of the seven cases here are gruesome but unmemorable, perhaps the inevitable result of Rule's prodigious output.
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