I found the beginning of this book to be tedious and unnecessarily slow. I get the need to paint a picture for the reader and to set the scene, but I don't need to go back 100 years in the past of the town the crime took place, I don't need to know how and by whom the town was founded. And I don't need to know how far back the murderers and conspirators can trace their lineage. However, once the book finally moved away from that and onto the actual families and people in intimately involved in the crime, I found the book engrossing and a fast-paced, interesting read that I really did quite enjoy. I was surprised and disappointed to find out, however, that ironically while the beginning of the book was slow and tedious with unnecessary and uninteresting information that had nothing or at least very little to do with the actual people and the actual crime, the end of the book (especially the last chapter) not only went too fast to the point of giving the feeling of being rushed but the author never said how the jury trial went. Whether Joel and Dana were convicted, and if so what their sentence was. He never mentioned what became of Jack Ponce and Peter Radovcich, either. Nor whatever happened with Monica Zent and her father. A lot of unanswered questions and an open-ended ending. Also, the author seems to have some kind of an odd disdain for people who are part of Generation X that I find eyebrow-raising at best, and oddly attributes Dana and Joel being part of this generation as at least reason in part for the way they "turned out," for lack of a better phrasing, which makes no sense whatsoever. The meat of the book was interesting and I easily got lost in it, but overall because of the beginning and lackluster (and incomplete) ending, it's not anything special. I'd recommend it to other true crime fans, but I would feel an obligation to caution them about the problems with the ending. I will admit that the ending is the way it is because the book was published a year before the outcome of the jury trials, but that really only means that perhaps the author should've waited a little longer to publish. It's also possible there is an updated version of this book that I don't know about. But that isn't the book I read, and I don't read true crime novels to create my own ending or have to Google the actual outcome. ( )