Fatal Sunset: Vanished Beauty (Quick Reads) by Mark Yoshimoto Nemcoff

This is a quick but informative read about two "perfect" and unsolved murders or something even more terrifying.  First is blonde and beautiful Robyn Colson Gardner, 35, who took a secret trip to the island of Aruba with a man she met online and then vanished without a trace on 2 August 2011.  Her disappearance has an eerie parallel to Natalee Holloway's disappearance in 2005.  Natalee was 18 years old and a recent high school graduate.  Both stayed in the same Aruban resort town of Oranjestad.

On 22 October 2003, Christina Mae Watson, 26, a young and pretty newlywed was found dead at the bottom of the ocean just one week into a dream Australian honeymoon. Extensive evidence showed it could have been a tragic accident.

The men who were involved in Robyn's mysterious disappearance and Tina's sinister death are walking free today.  The alleged motive of insurance money was the key factor in both the accusals.  In Robyn's case, it was a $1.5 million accidental death policy.

The author's advice based on this book is "Dare to be aware when going on vacation!"

Nemcoff has dedicated Fatal Sunset: Vanished Beauty (2013) to the memories of Robyn Gardner and Tina Watson.

About the author:  Mark Yoshimoto Nemcoff is a bestselling and award-winning author who has been known to occasionally moonlight as a voice-over artist and independent journalist.  He is a former Sirius Satellite Radio drive time show and TV host that has been featured by PlayBoy Magazine and Access Hollywood.  He is the writer behind Kindle bestsellers The Death of Osama Bin Laden and Where's My F***king Latte?, an insiders look at the world of Hollywood celebrity assistants that was not only featured on Access Hollywood, but has spent over five years straight on Amazon's top-selling charts in the categories Television and Movies.  Mark currently resides in Los Angeles.  He can be reached at MYN@WordSushi.com, Twitter.com/MYN and Facebook.com/MYNBooks.

A Perfect Husband (True Crime) by Aphrodite Jones

Paperback:  Michael Peterson was a decorated war veteran and bestselling novelist, his wife Kathleen a high-powered executive and devoted mother.  They seemed to be the perfect couple until that tragic night of 9 December 2001, in the posh suburb of Forest Hills in Durham, North Carolina, Michael found Kathleen at the bottom of the stairs in a pool of blood.

Aphrodite Jones draws on exclusive interviews and disturbing new evidence to update (latest update: 2013) this classic real-life thriller of marriage, manipulation and murder.

About the author:  The author of eight bestselling books, Aphrodite Jones is an internationally recognized authority on true crime.  She is the host and co-executive producer of Investigation Discovery's hit series True Crime with Aphrodite Jones, now in its third season.  Jones has frequently appeared as a crime expert on The O-Reilly Factor, Dateline NBC, The Today Show, CNN Newsroom, Piers Morgan Tonight, among others.  In addition, Jones created and hosted the reality crime-fighting TV show The Justice Hunters that aired on USA Network.  Her account of Brandon Teena, All She Wanted (1996), was the inspiration for the Academy Award winning film Boys Don't Cry (1999).  A Perfect Husband (2004) was made into the critically acclaimed Lifetime movie, The Staircase Murders (2007), which Jones co-produced with Lionsgate TV.  She divides her time between homes in New York and Florida.  She is on Facebook and Twitter.

Below is Part One of an eight-part documentary for ABC television - filmed by an award-winning French film crew, Maha Productions, in 2004 - almost exclusively on Michael Peterson as well as his immediate family, his attorneys, his defense team, his court hearings and the trial proceedings.  Back then, the presiding judge on Peterson's case was assured that the documentary would not be aired until after the trial verdict and sentencing and was convinced that a documentary of this nature would have educational value.  (Warning: the documentary contains dramatic scenes):

Bitter Almonds (True Crime) by Gregg Olsen

Paperback (Update:  2002, true crime):  Stella Nickell's small-time world was one of big-time dreams.  She of the clinging miniskirts, a wild mane of black hair, and cherry-red lips.  For a forty-two-year-old grandmother, Stella Maudine Nickell was hot stuff.

On 5 June 1986, her biggest one came true when her husband died during a seizure, making her the beneficiary of a $175 000-plus insurance payoff until authorities discovered Bruce Nickell's headache capsules had been laced with cyanide.

In an attempt to cover her tracks, Stella did the unconscionable.

Less than a week later on 11 June 1986, she saw to it that a stranger, Susan Snow, a forty-year-old Auburn bank manager, would also become a "random casualty" of cyanide-tainted painkillers.  Both Bruce and Susan died without regaining consciousness.  But Stella's cunning plan came undone when her daughter Cynthia notified federal agents and troubling questions lingered like the scent of bitter almonds.

What would turn a gregarious barfly like Stella into a cold-hearted killer overnight?  Why would Cynthia, a mirror image of her mother, turn on her own flesh and blood?  Did Cynthia reveal everything she knew about the crimes?  Was Stella a lone killer or did she have an accomplice in her daughter, Cynthia?  The stunning answers would unfold in a case that sparked a national uproar, dug deep into a troubled family history, and exposed an American mother for the pretty poison she was.

Stella went to trial in April 1988 and on 9 May 1988, after five days of jury deliberation, she was found guilty of five counts of product tampering.  One month later, the judge pronounced a sentence of two ninety-year terms, with parole a possibility at thirty years, for the charges relating to the deaths of Susan Snow and Bruce Nickell and three ten-year terms for the product tampering charges.  All sentences were to run concurrently.  She was also ordered to pay a small fine and forfeit her remaining assets to the families of her victims.  At that time, she made history by being the nation's first convicted federal product tamperer.

Now, almost seventy-one years of age and serving time at the federal women's prison near Pleasanton, California, Stella will be eligible for parole in the year 2018 when she will be seventy-five-years-old.

About the author:  Throughout his career, Gregg Olsen has demonstrated an ability to create a detailed narrative that offers readers fascinating insights into the lives of people caught in extraordinary circumstances.  The award-winning author has written nine non-fiction books, nine novels, a novella, and contributed a short story to a collection edited by Lee Child as well as been a guest on scores of national and local television shows, including educational programs for the History Channel, the Learning Channel, and Discovery Channel.  He, a Seattle native, lives in Olalla, Washington, with his wife, twin daughters, three chickens, Milo (cocker spaniel) and Suri (dachshund).

Olsen's next true crime book, If I Can't Have You:  Susan Powell, Her Mysterious Disappearance, and the Murder of Her Children, will be out on 20 May 2014.  For more information, click on his name (above).

Survived By One by Robert E Hanlon with Thomas V Odle

Hardback (Introduction, excerpt):  The deliberate, calculated, serial execution of all family members by one of the children is an extremely rare crime termed parricidal familicide, that represents less than 1 percent of all homicides in the world.  Survived By One:  The Life and Mind of a Family Mass Murderer, published on 6 August 2013, is the true story of one such unconscionable act.

Blurb:  On 8 November 1985, five members of the Odle family - parents, Robert and Carolyn, each approximately thirty-nine, Robyn, fourteen, Sean, thirteen, and Scott, ten - were brutally murdered in their home in Mt Vernon, a small town in Southern Illinois, sending shockwaves throughout the nation.

The murder of the Odle family remains one of the most horrific family mass murders in US history.

Tom Odle, the eldest son and only surviving member of the family, was charged with the murders the following day.  He was eighteen years old.  His capital murder trial revealed that his mother, Carolyn Odle, dominated the household and was a controlling, manipulative and emotionally detached woman with a penchant for corporal punishment, mostly tormenting him and his brother, Sean.  His father idly stood by and did nothing to defend them.

Although she was considered an upstanding member of the community and was president of the Parent-Teacher Organization (PTO) at her children's elementary school, the trial exposed the complex "correlation between the public persona and the private life of the maternal target."  It also revealed "a dynamic within the Odle household that is typical of dysfunctional families with an abusive element."

The court would learn that Tom's core motive for the mass murder of the entire Odle family was to kill his mother, Carolyn.

Tom was convicted of five counts of first-degree murder and sentenced to death at the age of nineteen - the youngest death-row inmate in the Illinois prison system - and, after seventeen years on death row, expected a lethal injection to end his life.

On 11 January 2003, in response to the growing number of death-row prisoners who had been exonerated due to wrongful convictions, Illinois Governor George Ryan commuted the death penalty of all death-row inmates in Illinois, and ultimately changed Tom's sentence to natural life without parole.

The commutation of his death sentence was an epiphany for Tom.  Prior to the commutation, Tom lived in denial, repressing any feelings about his family and his horrible crime.  Following the commutation and the removal of the weight of eventual execution, he was confronted with an unfamiliar reality:  a future.

As a result, he realized that he needed to understand why he murdered his family.  He reached out to Dr Robert Hanlon, a neuropsychologist who had examined him in the past.  Dr Hanlon engaged him in a therapeutic process of introspection and self-reflection, which became the basis of their collaboration on this book.

Dr Hanlon tells a gripping story of Tom's life as an abused child, the life experiences that formed his personality, and his tragic homicidal escalation to mass murder, seamlessly weaving into the narrative Tom's unadorned reflections on his childhood, finding a new family on death row and his belief in the powers of redemption.

As our nation attempts to understand the continual mass murders occurring in the United States, Survived By One sheds some light on the psychological aspects of why and how such acts of extreme carnage may occur.  However, Survived By One also offers a never-before-told perspective from the mass murderer himself, as he searches for the answers concurrently being asked by the nation and the world.

Tom said in an interview in 2009, "You can't just put people in cells and leave them.  You've got to get them educated.  Educated people make educated decisions.  So if you send an educated person back to the world, he's going to make educated decisions and hopefully, be educated enough that he won't land in the penitentiary again."  Tom is the first and only former death-row inmate among the 167 death-row inmates whose sentences were commuted to achieved a college degree.

On 9 March 2011, the death penalty was abolished in the State of Illinois.

In 2012, Tom was transferred to the Dixon Correctional Center of the Illinois Department of Corrections and has remained there since.  He said, "My story could be used as a teaching tool if someone else comes down this road, if they feel this is the only thing they have left.  Options.  When you're young and you get involved in drugs, you are really not aware of the world.  Life is so narrow, and you're not really thinking about tomorrow or looking for opportunities.  You think, 'I've got to resolve this right here, right now.'  It's a little picture compared to the big picture.  Be proud of it cause it's the only one you get."

What lessons can we derive from Tom's story?  Reverend Gary Fore's address is perhaps worth thinking about.  He said, "If one child passes through here and figures alcohol and drugs are really not the fun they figure them to be, that they're really not worth it compared to the pain they bring..." and perhaps his most salient point, "If one parent passes through here and realizes that choosing up sides and being abusive to each other in the family is not healthy...then these (the Odles) have not died in vain."

The biggest factor in the shaping of a potential family killer is a history of childhood abuse.  "It's hard not to overstress that," said Dr Hanlon.

Tom receives no financial compensation for his contribution to this book.

About the author:  Robert E Hanlon, PhD, is a board-certified clinical neuropsychologist with a specialization in forensic neuropsychology and is an associate professor of clinical psychiatry and clinical neurology at Northwestern University Feinberg of Medicine in Chicago.  He has more than twenty-five years of experience as a forensic expert, evaluating hundreds of murder defendants and death-row inmates and testifying in many murder trials.  His publications include more than thirty articles and chapters in professional journals and textbooks. 

About Thomas V Odle:  Odle is an inmate at the Dixon Correctional Center, Illinois Department of Corrections.  In 1986 at the age of nineteen, Odle was convicted of five counts of first-degree murder and sentenced to death for the mass murder of his family.  Odle has spent his entire adult life in maximum-security prisons, including seventeen years on death row.  In 2003 the governor of Illinois commuted Odle's death sentence to natural life.

The Golden Calf by Helene Tursten

Paperback:  Three men have been shot in one of Gothenburg's most fashionable neighbourhoods, sending Irene Huss and her colleagues on a goose chase through a tony world of expensive cars and fancy homes.

All three victims seem to be tied to one person, the glamorous dot-com darling Sanna Kaegler-Ceder, but Sanna isn't talking, even when her own life seems to be at stake.

Swedish Detective Inspector Irene Huss - jiujitsu champion, mother of teenage twin girls, and investigator on Gothenburg murder squad - faces a case of very dirty big money and someone who is willing to kill for it.

About the author:  Helene Tursten was born on Gothenburg on the Swedish west coast, where she lives today.  She is in fact trained as a nurse and a dentist.  After working as a nurse for three years, she decided to go to dental school.  It was when she returned to school for her dental degree that Helene met her husband, who had been a policeman.  They are still married more than thirty years later with a daughter who is now an adult.  The dog in the Inspector Irene Huss Investigation books, Sammie, is based on their real-life dog, who lived to the ripe old age of fifteen.

Helene spent ten years practising dentistry before her career was curtailed due to rheumatic illness.  That was when she turned to writing.  Today, she has written ten novels about Irene Huss and her colleagues at the police headquarters in Gothenburg.  The books have been translated into eighteen languages.

There are also twelve TV films that have been made featuring Detective Inspector Irene Huss.  The films have been shown in many European countries.  Helene wrote the story synopses and edited all the film scripts in collaboration with professional script writers.  Working on the films has been a real kick for her and she thinks has also been good for her books.

"There's a big difference between writing a book and writing a script for a film," Helene says.  "When I  am working with a film plot I have to think in pictures and within the limitations of a budget.  It is very inspiring for me as a writer to think and work in a different way."

The Golden Calf (2013) is the fifth book in the Inspector Irene Huss Investigation series.  The Golden Calf was originally published in Sweden, as Guldkalven, in 2003.  The Golden Calf is translated from the Swedish into the English by Laura A Wideburg.

The next and sixth book of the Inspector Irene Huss Investigation, The Fire Dance, will be available on 23 January 2014 in both hardback and Kindle forms.

Other books in the Detective Inspector Huss series are Detective Inspector Huss (2003), The Torso (2006), The Glass Devil (2007), and Night Rounds (2012).

Rating:  5/5

Happy New Year 2014

Darkest, Most Ancient Parts

Sisterland by Curtis Sittenfeld

Hardback:  Identical twins Kate and Violet are about as unlike as two peas from the same pod can be.

Except in one respect - they share a hidden gift they call 'the Senses', a special kind of intuition that can allow them to see things that are yet to come.

After Kate inadvertently reveals their secret when they are thirteen years old, they are set on diverging paths into their adult lives.

Twenty years later, Kate is a suburban housewife who suppresses her premonitions in the hope of leading a normal family life, while Violet lives alone and works as a psychic medium.

Then one day Violet ignites a media storm by predicting a major earthquake in the St Louis area where they live.

As the day Violet has announced for the earthquake draws nearer, the sisters must grapple with the legacy of the past, the confusion of the present and the unsettling glimpses they both have of the future.

Funny, haunting and thought-provoking, Sisterland is a book about the obligation we have toward others and the responsibility we take for ourselves.

It is also a mesmerizing novel of family and identity, loyalty and deception, and the delicate line between truth and belief.

About the author:  Curtis Sittenfeld is the author of the word-of-mouth bestseller American Wife (2008) which was longlisted for the Orange Prize, as was her first novel, Prep (2005), a New York Times bestseller.  It was followed by The Man of My Dreams (2006).  Sisterland (2013) is her latest book.  Her books are translated into twenty-five languages.  She is also the author of an e-book called A Regular Couple (2012), available exclusively for Kindle.  She is married, with two young children.

Rating:  5/5

Death Angel by Linda Fairstein

Hardback:  In New York's Central Park, Assistant DA Alex Cooper and Detective Mike Chapman race to track down a serial killer before yet another young woman is found dead.  Is the body in the Ramble the first victim of a deranged psychopath or could other missing women be connected to this savage attack?

The enormous urban park, a sanctuary in the middle of the city for thousands of New Yorkers and tourists who fill it every day, may very well become a hunting ground at night for a killer with a twisted mind.

Death Angel (2013) is the fifteenth and the latest book in the excellent Assistant DA Alexandra Cooper series.

About the author:  Like Assistant DA Alexandra Cooper, Linda Fairstein was once a top New York City prosecutor.  She is one of America's foremost legal experts on crimes of violence against women and children.  For three decades, she served in the office of the New York County District Attorney, where she was Chief of the Sex Crimes Prosecution Unit.

In 2010, she was presented with the Silver Bullet Award from the International Thriller Writers Association.  Fairstein's Alexandra Cooper novels have been translated into more than a dozen languages and have debuted on the Sunday Times and the New York Times bestseller lists, among others.  She lives in Manhattan and on Martha's Vineyard.  Follow her on Twitter @LindaFairstein.

The next and sixteenth book in the Assistant DA Alex Cooper series, Terminal City, will be out in June 2014.  Hurray!

Rating:  5/5

Merry Christmas To All

The Virgin today brings into the world the Eternal.  And the earth offers a cave to the inaccessible.  The angels and shepherds praise him and the magi advance with the star.  For you are born for us, Little Child, God Eternal. - Kontakion of Romanos the Melodist.

Dr Seuss (1904-1991)

Nelson Mandela (1918-2013)

Thomas Moore, Irish Poet (1779-1852)

Robert Heinlein (1907-1988)