Sunday, February 16, 2014

Surprise, the guy with the creepy mustache wanted to do it

Book: If You Really Loved Me
Author: Ann Rule
Published: 1991 (Pocket Books)
Pages: 585


All true crime books have the same beats of warped love, sexual impulses, family ties, obsessive fixations, melodramatic senses of loyalty, and unexpected violence. This one's no different except I happened to pick it up first and - look, guys, you already know I'm an emotional reader. With my volunteer credit at the used book store and my inability to depend on a pre-20s metabolism, it's way less expensive than an emotional eating habit (although this went delightfully with the white chocolate chip cookiemuffins I baked for Valentine's Day, of which I got no photo before scarfing samples/giving the rest to friends).

David Brown is a guy who married five times, got rich but not classy (although he'd say differently with his phoenix pendent, oh geez as if, dude) off software data recovery, and got his step-sister-in-law to kill his last wife so he and SSIL could get married. At least that's what he told her when they were sneaking around his wife's back. So it goes.

He gets caught because although he's a florid liar he's sort of a bad one, and the SSIL finally wakes up and is all, "Um, why am I covering for that guy with a bad mustache who's been molesting me since I was 11?" and spills. She stays in prison because she did in fact pull the trigger, but the dude also goes to prison for conspiracy to murder.

The story is standard but well-reported and clearly written, with a couple stinger sentences that the editor should've cut but nothing that was overly distracting. It seems borderline sociopathic to call this book soothing, but all I mean is I didn't have to think too hard. That's a virtue, sure, but I'm donating this because if I ever get the urge again, this exact same author has like twenty more in the same vein, and I know where to find 'em (down on the knee-cracking bottom shelf).

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