So there are a lot of stories here of life and love and death; death that comes expected and unexpected and an undertone of how sometimes women feel compelled to stay with husbands besides knowing they are bad news, sometimes because they are afraid of what will happen and while some of them escape they can't escape their ultimate fate.
You know going in that there will be death, but sometimes it just feels like some men really need to escape the paternalistic urges to possess women. We really have done wrong in how we build the relationships people have in our world.
It was interesting for about 300 pages but after that I just felt like I was drowning in a tide of macho over-possessiveness and gruesome details. Like when I overindulged in True Crime TV during the Covid century. ( )

I think that Rule should have kept the first story as it's own standalone cause that with the other stories doesn't really work.

Mortal Danger (3 stars)-The first story is about Kathy Ann Jewell and her affair with a man that she really didn't know. I think that Rule dragged things out way too much and there were a lot of holes. I imagine cause she didn't have a chance to talk to the man who was the focus of her story here, John Branden. We do read about how mentally and physically abusive Branden is to Kathy Ann over the years finally culminating in an incident that left Kahty Ann raped, beaten, and fearing for her life. When Rule tries to follow what little Branden leaves behind when he moves onto another woman, named Turi Bentley. When the story shifts to Turi, there's not much there. Ultimately a sad story.

Written in Blood (3 stars)-It took me a while to realize that I had heard of this story before while watching Forensic Files. Rule was really repetitive in this story though she did add on some things I had not heard about before. It appears the man who ultimately was responsible for the murder of his neighbors (Daniel Tavares) and possible serial killer. And then we are told that the man in question was molested by his mother's one boyfriend (that still lived with him) and there could be potentially other things that were done to him as well. BTW this is not to excuse the man, it's just we are flung a lot of information our way as readers and it didn't feel as if Rule had done a lot of research or culling to make the story more coherent. We don't get a sense of the murdered married couple, Bev and Brian Mauck.

If I Can't Have You... (3 stars)-The story of Amelia Jager who ended up marrying the wrong man. After visiting Switzerland she meets a man that she falls head over heels about. Realizing he has a mental disorder, she realizes she needs to move back to America and divorce him when there is nothing more she can do. I felt sad about this story since it appears he never should have been given permission to fly to the U.S. This was a fairly short story in the collection though. I didn't get a sense of Amelia at all.

Thirty Years Later (4 stars)-This was odd. I didn't like the first part of the story at all. But when Rule goes into what at first doesn't seem to be a similar case, things tied up in the end.

Not Safe at Home (3 stars)-Fairly short and just sad. A woman who was attacked, raped, and murdered by someone she thought she knew. Rule ends about women living alone should be doubly cautious and I wanted very badly to add anyone living alone should be cautious. Anyone not living alone should be cautious. Bad things happen in the daylight, night time or even if you have dogs, a burglar alarm, or weapons. ( )

So compelling. I could not put it down. There is just something about Ann Rule's true crime novels that just grip me and suck me right on in. They give me the creeps, and they are sad and disturbing, and yet I just can not get enough. ( )

This is the best Ann Rule book I've read. I felt that in her other true-crime books, her writing was stilted and dry. It was hard to get involved in the stories and worse yet, hard to care about the people. This one, feels more like she's telling the stories of the victims. I worry about women in the first story - Mortal Danger. This may be because the first victim survived and could tell of the horror she faced. But the storytelling continued throughout the book. This book like most of her previous books is based on true crimes from the Northwest; She has selected several stories all but one are about lone women who are abused and killed. One involves a couple. Like life, sometimes the why of the crime is revealed and sometimes it's not.
The title story - Mortal Danger, seemed to drag in places and is lengthy. I think some of the lesser details could have been omitted in order to keep the story moving. The next story was about a couple who were found murdered in their home. This story was move concise. There are several more, But I think Rule's best is one of the shorter stories - "If I can't have you" - it was particularly chilling. A woman marries a man in the Netherlands, after the wedding his domineering side comes out, she leaves and returns to America but he stalks her to her home. Eventually, he kills her.
I'm so glad that Rule has become a storyteller as well as a reporter. I'm looking forward to reading her next book. ( )

Ann Rule does her usual fine job of following the tortuous paths of true crime. The stories in this collection focus on domestic violence. All of the stories here take place in the Pacific Northwest, as her stories often do. This is home ground for Ann, and she loves and describes it so well. She makes sure the stories are cautionary, warning women to watch for the warning signs of developing poisonous relationships as mirrored in the victims in these cases. ( )