'Worth More Dead': a bit of a pot-boiler

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	• Worth More Dead: And Other True Cases (Ann Rule's Crime Files, Vol. 10) Ann Rule Pocket, 2005 - 432 pages average customer review:based on 22 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Not as Good as Others

I am a big fan of Ann Rule. I buy every book she writes, just because her name is on it. And I've never been disappointed until now. I thought her main crime story, "Worth More Dead", was lacking in the usual excitement and juicy details she always weaves her stories with. Ms. Rule has seemed to stop writing at length about the police officers' lives, and that is a big plus. I've noticed it in her last few books. It seems like "Worth More Dead" is a long story that doesn't have enough oomph for the main case story. This might have been better off used as one of her other, shorter case files in this or another book. The other, briefer cases she writes of in this book are excellent. Good old Ann Rule tightness, page-turning excitement with incredible cases - hard to put down. Rule fans should not overlook this book.

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Still More True Crime Stories

This is volume ten in the series of true crime cases. It contains five stories, the first and longest gave the title to this book. Ann Rule has written 23 books that were `NY Times' bestsellers. Rule lives near Seattle and her stories document crimes in that area. Rule has testified before the US Senate Judiciary Sub-committee and advised the US Justice Dept. on a program to track and trap serial killers.

"Worth More Dead" refers to a series of cases that were linked by the involvement of one person. If someone with life insurance is killed they are "worth more dead" to someone. But insurance companies will investigate suspicious deaths. [Read "Double Indemnity" by James M. Cain.] Did Roland arrange the murder of a husband to please the wife? Did he arrange the murder of his wife for the insurance money? Did he plan to murder his daughter? Read how his careful plans miscarried and lead to his conviction. Can the conversation on a remote phone be overheard by a neighbor (p.191)? The development of DNA evidence led to a break in the unsolved murder of Roland's first wife.

"It's Really Weird Looking at My Own Grave" tells of a serial rapist who killed his victims so they couldn't identify him. One quick thinking teenage girl escaped with her life. Detectives searched their files to find a possible match. They did, and the victims identified him.

"Old Man's Darling" is a story about a young woman who sought an older rich married man after unsuccessful marriages. Beauty alone does not make up for an ugly personality. The older man's decision to end the affair angered the younger woman. She shot and killed the older man, and the police shot and killed her. A pocket tape recorder revealed the drama of their last conversation.

"All for Nothing" is the story of Larry Sturholm, a TV reporter on humorous subjects. He wrote a book about "the last great train robbery" in Oregon. His charmed life ended with two murders and an attempted suicide. Larry's secret girlfriend had an insanely jealous former boyfriend. Was the killer legally insane at the time?

"A Desperate Housewife" tells about a couple who were married for years with children. But a mismatch in personalities developed over a dozen years. After the wife decided to ask for a divorce she disappeared after leaving for work, her husband said. None of her personal belongings were gone. A police search of the house found signs of foul play. You know the rest of this story.

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Ann Rule is the Master!

Ann Rule is fabulous. This book is no different then her others, it captures you in the beggining and keeps you turning the pages amazed at what goes on in the world around you.

'Worth More Dead': a bit of a pot-boiler

Ann Rule at her best is undoubtedly one of the outstanding true crime writers of her generation. This book, by comparison, verges on the tedious.

The five stories are all written in her usual workmanlike style but somehow lack the spark of some of her earlier books. The cases she presents deal with the murderous conclusion of relationship breaddowns, and all reflect her deep empathy with victims and their families, but overall they lack those twists of circumstance, fate and analysis that we have come to expect from an Ann Rule book.

The first and longest story, 'Worth More Dead', deals with a man who slips almost inexplicably from youthful Romeo to aging wife killer, always able to keep his distance from his crimes by manipulating others to carry out his dirty work. Rule herself says about him at the beginning 'I don't even know where to start explaining this killer'; and at the end of her story we have much the same problem.

Of the remaining cases, one deals with the ability of two teenage girls to survive a murderous attack and the way police were able to use the information they provided to capture an otherwise fairly ordinary killer. The next story, 'Old Man's Darling' describes a gripping situation in which an attractive woman murders her sugar daddy, a man twice her age, when he tries to leave her, but as with most of the other stories leaves the reader feeling that the story needed fleshing out. 'All For Nothing', the story of an otherwise reputable man who viciously kills the woman he loves and her suspected lover, and the last, 'A Desperate Housewife', also address the themes of jealousy, possessiveness and revenge.

As Rule notes, the trauma that can flow from relationship breakdowns, even where they do not end in murder, is common to many lives and for that reason if for no other this book has a grim appeal.

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Not one of my Ann Rule favorites

Although I am an Ann Rule fan and she is one of the top true crime writers, this book is not one of my favorites by this author. Perhaps it the mix of five stories covering events from 1923 through 1998 or the apparent lack of in-depth coverage of each case. Whatever the cause, the result is a conglomeration of disjointed partial stories that appeared to be used as "fillers" to create a single book. In my opinion this book is not worthy of Rule's talent.

reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

Why would a man kill his lover's husband and then his wife, the woman who fought successfully to have him paroled from prison? Why would he risk arrest by kidnapping the child of another woman who adored him?

Because they were...

Worth More Dead

A cold case reopened -- and solved -- with dogged police work and new evidence. One of the shocking true crimes of passion and greed from Ann Rule's Crime Files.

Former Marine sergeant and judo instructor Roland Pitre Jr. claimed it was all an elaborate plan to win back his wife's love -- it wasn't supposed to end with her dead body in the trunk of a car. Nearly twenty years later, he acknowledged that he had hired someone to kill his estranged wife in 1988, though his alleged excuse for why a monstrous "mistake" happened is as shocking and convoluted as the crime itself. Eventually, he was charged with first-degree murder in the long-unsolved death of Cheryl Pitre, after a mysterious witness betrayed Pitre to save his own skin. Tracing back the dark and bloody path of Pitre's life, two generations of detectives found a chain of brutal and terrifying crimes by a man who manipulated the courts and prisons to walk free.

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