Gabriela Przybylska

I usually love Anne Rules' books, but unfortunately this one just didn't meet her usual standard. I tried to give this book an honest chance, I read 300 painful pages with the hope that the book will get better. But I think this book suffers from bad writing. There is a LOT of disorganised, jumping forward and backwards in time. There is also an unnecessary amount of repetition and waffling. I think this book could have been written in 300 pages and not 500, and in doing that it may have been more pleasant and engaging to read. There is a whole lot of pages that are pretty much talking about nothing and repetitions of what has been said before in every chapter. There are very few pages on the actual serial killer himself. But there are some nice descriptions of victims and their lives which would be the only highlight of this book so far, and of course the few pages on the actual serial killer and his life. Other than that, it's a whole lot of waffling. Talking about the same group of detectives and their struggle every couple of pages, as well as the miniscule changes in the task force. I don't know if this was done intentionally to provoke feelings of impatience and frustration in readers as the actual case did on detectives and the victims families. If it was, it's a genius idea, but it's not what contributes to a good book for me. I don't think I can finish this book, as hard as I have tried. It is not concisely written and Ann was not able to summarise the information in an engaging narrative. I must say I am disappointed.