Home!

We just got home tonight. I have to sort through all the pictures and memory cards to put together a little post about our family 4th.

But one thing I did on my 4th of July vacation that I haven't done in awhile. I read a book! I haven't had time to do that in ages!

What did I read? A true crime collection and I love these kinds of books.

It was a book my inlaws had laying around. Ann Rule's "Without Pity". I really like Ann Rule. I became familiar with her years ago when I worked at a bookstore. She is a Pacific Northwest author, and focuses her cases on those stories that aren't overplayed in the media (ie Scott Peterson and Mary Winkler) and that are in the Northwest.

I also appreciate her relationship with law enforcement and criminals. She gets the interviews that no one else gets. It rids her books of speculation, and she really strives to give you the facts, and not sensationalism.

So this particular book is a collection of short cases that she has wanted to write about but didn't do a full book on. Now, I am maybe a little twisted. I like these kinds of stories. I love to watch "Forensic Files", "FBI Files", "The Investigators", "Cold Case", etc. I like crime stories for some reason. I know that isn't everyone's taste.

Here is what tripped me up just a bit about these ten stories. Nine of the ten of them were stories from Seattle and were freaky. The central theme in these stories were how someone who has been so normal suddenly changes on a dime and commits horrible crimes. The victims couldn't see it coming, and the victims were usually close family members. Most of them were this way.

The final story was the one that got me. It was the first time Ann Rule gave the facts about this case mainly to protect the one surviving victim. It was a murder/rape that happened in 1976 very close to where I live! That is what creeps me a bit about her stories, she suddenly starts describing streets and roads I have traveled on in the final story of this short story collection!

I don't know anything else about that case except what was in the story, and I have googled it and found nothing. The criminal in that case hasn't been paroled yet, but he goes up for parole occasionally. The prosecutors in that case go to the parole board on behalf of the victim, for her protection mainly.

Anyway, those stories are in my mind right now, and I should probably find a shallow, trashy romance novel now.