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Dewey Decimal Number: 364.15230924 EAN: 9780393013993 Edition: 1st ISBN: 0393013995 Label: W W Norton & Co Inc Manufacturer: W W Norton & Co Inc Number Of Items: 1 Number Of Pages: 350 Publication Date: 1980-08 Publisher: W W Norton & Co Inc Studio: W W Norton & Co Inc Editorial Review: Amazon.com Review: Not long ago, true crime writer Ann Rule recalls lying on an operating table. The anesthesiologist leaned over before putting her to sleep. "Ann," the anesthesiologist said softly, "tell me, what was Ted Bundy really like?" Despite meeting Florida's electric chair in 1989, the subject of Rule's bestselling book continues to haunt her. Rule and Bundy were friends. They met in 1971 at a Seattle crisis clinic, where they shared the late shift answering a suicide hotline. Their subsequent conversations, meetings, and letters spanned the rest of Bundy's life as he evolved into one of the century's most notorious serial killers. It's been 20 years since Rule first penned this chilling account. But the story--and her 2000 update--will still have readers reaching for their Xanax. No gratuitous gore here; just the basic, bone-chilling evidence. In fact, like a protective mother shielding us from horrors too awful to mention, Rule seems to avoid delving too deeply into crime scene descriptions. She devotes one paragraph in her new afterword to her discovery that Bundy engaged in necrophilia and returned to the scenes of his crimes to "line dead lips and eyes with garish makeup and to put blush on pale cheeks." She tells readers that John Hinckley, who shot Ronald Reagan, and David Berkowitz, the Son of Sam Killer, traded prison correspondences with Bundy. And she hints that Bundy's insatiable killer instincts may have started when he was a 14-year-old paperboy. (Ann Marie Burr, an 8-year-old girl on his route, mysteriously disappeared in the middle of the night and has never been found.) The skimpy update is over too soon, leaving readers wanting more and offering further proof of the public's never-ending fascination with serial killers. --Jodi Mailander Farrell Product Description: Ted Bundy was handsome, charming, a brilliant law student, and on the verge of a dazzling career. On January 24, 1989, he was executed for the murders of three young women, having confessed to taking the lives of at least thirty-five more. This is the story of one of the most fascinating killers in American history--of his magnetic power, his bleak compulsion, his double life, his string of helpless victims. It is also the story of Ann Rule, a writer working on the biggest story of her life, tracking down a brutal mass murderer. Little did she realize that the "Ted" the police were seeking was the same Ted who worked with her at a Seattle crisis clinic, a man who had become her close friend and confidant. As she began to put the evidence together, a terrifying picture emerged of the man she thought she knew. Twenty years after it was first published, The Stranger Beside Me remains a gripping, explosive true-crime classic. 8 pages of photographs. Average Rating:
 Rating:  - Incredible Angle Makes the Book WorkAnn and Ted were Crisis Hotline buddies. Ann was contracted to write a book about his case on the side without knowing he was the one responsible for the recent string of murders. The angle is amazing and has the effect of humanizing Ted, though there seems to be an impulse in view of future revelations, to cast him as being even more of a monster for the fact that he behaved like one a mere fraction of the time. Monstrous: The Autobiography of a Serial Killer but for the Grace of ... Read More Rating: - Ann Rule Is A Victim TooAs I sat reading Ann Rule's riveting book, it occured to me that this piece of crime writing is actually a classic in American literature. Some may not agree. How many people can start to write about grisly murders and find out that a true friend that used to work by her side was the actual killer? This book takes one into the deepest,darkest, sickest recesses of Bundy's mind and lays him out for what he is, a creature that was unstoppable and who really could not stop himself from these horribly ... Read More Rating: - Very grippingWhen you know the ending it is hard to write or read a book without being biased with the knowledge. This book weaves what was known and what was not at any given time so well that in your mind you keep trying to reconcile the two and for those moments you do not want to connect them to the end that is now so well known. The way she introduces Ted in the beginning and the way events unravel, you keep trying to juxtapose the known Ted Bundy and the mysterious and ruthless killer who left a trail of death ... Read More Rating: - Some comments....This may be the best, most insightful biography of a serial killer ever written. Oddly, it was only on my second reading that I realized how short Mr. Bundy's reign of homicidal brutality actually was. From January of 1974 until August of 1975, Mr. Bundy lured, attacked, and murdered young women in Washington State, Oregon, Colorado and Utah. In January of 1978 Mr. Bundy went on his infamous, and rather uncharacteristic, rampage on the campus of Florida State University and, on February 9th of that ... Read More Rating: - Great, fascinating bookI am 28 and so was only a young girl when Bundy was executed. I had heard of him, but was not familiar with the extent of his crimes. Working in the forensic field, I am fascinated with the stories of true crime and serial killers. I am an avid reader but sometimes it is hard for me to find non-fiction books that really hold my attention. Not the case with this book. I received this book for my birthday and started it as soon as I finished the book I was reading at the time. I couldn't put it down! ... Read More |
