Eric Francis

A decent true crime book. I did not know anything beforehand about this case as with most true crimes. When i started reading I did think the wife was crazy, sorry, but I was glad that in the end the author also agreed with me so far that how she "used" God in her life was very unhealthy. I liked how this author wrote about the dad in the beginning. He had a way of keeping the suspense open. He did not tell who did it in the beginning as so many other authors did. Do not understand that there are still people out there supporting dad. Where they found her it was obvious he did it. Proof enough to me. Give this book a 3.8… (plus d'informations)

Slam-bang opportunistic post-adolescent writing with more than a teasin' taste of good ol' fashioned vulgarity. It may seem harsh, but the January 2001 murders of sophisticated and progressive academics Susanne and Half Zantop may have been best thing that had ever happened to the then-young reporter Eric Francis, who quite fortuitously was living and working in the area at the time of the homicide. When he isn't heaping up pointless detail (as if he were being paid by the word) he seems frantic to convince us that he is the smartest person in the room; he isn't -- just the most self-involved.
This book was rushed into print even before the conclusion of the trials in which spoiled adolescents Jimmy Parker and Robert Tulloch were convicted on overwhelming evidence. Even so, the core-story is a fascinating, albeit grisly one, and despite Francis's style which is always heavy-handed, repetitive, and occasionally unfactual (e.g., could both author AND editor not have known when World War Two began?). The author is at his best -- and I give him full credit for this -- when discussing the epidemic of denial which swept over the home-community of the killers. For years these kids had been on a collision-course with some sort of catastrophe, and the same people who'd looked right past those clear danger-signsbefore the crime couldn't accept the post-mortem evidence of fingerprints, footprints, and unique crime-scene evidence, plus self-incriminating testimony. Incidentally, there does exist at-least one more book on this crime, though I cannot speak to its accuracy or the journalistic competence of its author.
To end on a more-or-less positive note, let me quote a choice passage. Not necessarily relevant to the real story, and maybe even written for something else, but folded-in here because the occasion presented itself. Good though!
"From practically unknown to practically a cottage industry in a few short years, the [US Navy] SEALs seem to occupy a part of that sub-cultural imagination that also likes to delve into ninjas, poisonous snakes, and movies featuring beautiful Russian women who have been trained to operate complex nuclear weapons and wear short skirts and high heels while they do so."… (plus d'informations)

This was an all right book. Not badly written just didn't get a clear answer for me as to which side I was on. I got a lot of facts as they were presented to the jury, but I would have liked to hear more background information from Susan's claims of abuse, more history. Perhaps the author wasn't able to secure any research on that. Nevertheless, to think a two-week trial and all the history of abuse, which, was her defense as to what she had been subjected to for years had not come out more at trial and then re-told through the book left me feeling like the author left out a lot. Hard to make any decisions when you feel like so much is missing. In the end, the book left me feeling; what aren't you telling me?… (plus d'informations)