Reading Local Seattle

{ But I trusted you. I did. }

[ But I Trusted You And Other True Cases: Ann Rule's Crime Files Vol. 14 | Ann Rule | Pocket | $7.99 ]

Is the blood beginning to run thin in Seattle author Ann Rule’s “Crime Files” series?

Or is “But I Trusted You”, the fourteenth and latest volume in the Queen Of True Crime’s bargain-priced paperback line, merely an unfortunate departure from Rule’s normally reliable reporting and storytelling? The title story, with its skimpy chronology of events, its limited insights into the couple whose marriage ended in murder, and its careless errors of fact and supposition, raises both questions.

As a Rule fan and follower I sincerely hope the latter is true—that “But I Trusted You” is a pothole on a road with many miles still left on it. Because, even though she’s now in her seventies and has written for four decades, it’s hard to imagine that this mighty and self-made force of Northwest nonfiction might be slowing down.

(more…)

“Are you trying to ask me what happened to the boy?”
“Well, yes. But I don’t mean to —”
“I told you, I understand. After all, he was here for a while, and you are aware that while he was here I screwed him for everything he was worth. Aren’t you? Say yes.”
“Yes.”
“And now he’s gone. So you’re worried.”
“Right. I just mean …”
“You just mean that you want to know what in the hell happened to him. Don’t you, Sanford?” Uncle Stewart was still standing within kicking range, but his face remained calm and his manner easy. “Because I’m telling you, I am confessing this to your face right here, my dick is so sore from doing that boy’s brown butt that I can barely hold it! If I need to pee, I’ll just have to drop trousers and let it swing like a monkey. Ha-ha! You realize that? Ha-ha-ha!”
“But it would be good if he just went off somewhere … I mean, if you let him go off somewhere … if you realized that he’s not going to want to speak about any of it.”
“Because you aren’t inclined to speak about any of it?”
“Well, I guess so.”
— Excerpt from The Road Out Of Hell

{ Flacco at Seattle Mystery Bookshop, noon, 11/14/09

[ The Road Out Of Hell: Sanford Clark and The True Story Of The Wineville Murders | Anthony Flacco | Union Square Press | $24.95 ]

If The Road Out Of Hell, the newest book by Bainbridge Island author Anthony Flacco, had come out in 1966, it might have been the most controversial book in America. That’s because 1966 was the year Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood came out to a near-universal crush of critical bouquets and brickbats. The national spotlight, when not on the publicity-happy author, fell on Capote’s technique of creating dialogue and facts — especially to dramatically develop scenes at which no surviving people were present. To wit, who knows what really happened? And if the author’s way of telling what really happened is colorful and compelling enough, who really cares?

(more…)