Mortal Danger, Ann Rule

I took a break from the Nancy Drew books, but still didn't change the genre. I love mysteries and true crime fits right in.

With that said, 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.