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5 comments about The Adversary: A True Story of Monstrous Deception.

1. Jean-Claude Romand seems to have a well-organized life: he is a successful doctor at the World Health Organization in Geneva with a beautiful house, loving wife, two nice kids and a lover on the side. That is, until he kills his wife and children on a Saturday afternoon in January 2003, murders his parents and their dogs and attempts to kill his lover before he half-heartedly tries to commit suicide (and remove any remaining traces of the crimes). Then it becomes clear that his life was one big lie: he is not a successful doctor but a medicine student that did not finish his education and who for the past 18 years pretended to be successful, but spent his days reading in the car or hiking in the mountains while everybody thinks he is working. He "earns" a living by pretending to make profitable long-term financial deals for family and friends with Swiss banks, while he is in reality using up this money for his daily expenses. And then the moment comes when people start to realize that there is something fishy going on. All in all it is a miracle that this took 18 years...
   
   Emmanuel Carrère reconstructed this real (!) story based on court reports, interviews, meetings and even correspondence with the murderer. This is an intriguing and terrifying glimpse into the soul (if present) of a psychopath.



2. This brilliant "true story of monstrous deception" reads like a novel and is every bit as good as Truman Capote's IN COLD BLOOD and Norman Mailer's THE EXECUTIONER'S SONG. Emmanuel Carrere, "one of France's most critically acclaimed writers," according to the jacket blurb, is such a good writer that if you aren't careful, you will be far more sympathetic than you ought to be toward Jean-Claude Romand who one day in January 1993 killed his wife and two children, then travelled to his aged parents' home and killed both of them and finally in a bungled suicide attempt-- or was it-- set his house on fire with him and his dead wife and children still in it. Mr. Carrere became fascinated with Romand's story, a correspondence between the two men ensued, and this book is the result.
   
   Mr. Carrere delves into how Mr. Romand got to the place where he felt there was no exit for him other than murder, his brilliant lies on top of lies over the years and why he managed to escape being found out for so long.
   
   Since France does not have capital punishment, Romand got life in prison for his crimes. Of course he, as do many inmates when faced with a long prison sentence, finds religion. To Mr. Carrere's everlasting credit he is not persuaded. "He [Romand] is not putting on an act, of that I'm sure, but isn't the liar inside him putting one over on him? When Christ enters his heart, when the certainty of being loved in spite of everything makes tears of joy run down his cheeks, isn't it the adversary deceiving him yet again"?
   
   This is fine writing indeed.



3. "One the Saturday morning of January 9, 1993 while Jean-Claude Romand was killing his wife and children, I was with mine in a parent-teacher meeting." So begins this absorbing non-fiction account of murder and deception in France. At the heart of this story is Jean-Claude Romand, a noted physician with the World Health Organization, a groundbreaking researcher with connections to international humanitarian, a financial wizard entrusted with his in-laws savings, a devoted husband and father and a loving son who called his parents every night. But the carefully developed façade of this successful man begins to disintegrate revealing the true Romand: a man who never graduated from medical school let alone obtained a license, a swindler and a [...] who used the money of trusting relatives and friends to pay for his comfortable middle class life, an unemployed lout who spent his days after supposedly leaving for work aimlessly wandering. Romand was a smooth, accomplished liar whose entire life was a tissue of deception. Faced with [...]. So he murders his wife, their two children and his mother and father and then makes a half-hearted attempt at suicide. Even after he has been caught red-handed, Romand is incapable of telling the truth, spinning preposterous tales as the police carefully catalogue his monstrous crimes. In chilling, precise prose the book explores the life of Jean-Claude Romand and how his utter inability to face reality compels him to murder. Part matter-of-fact crime drama and part psychological analysis, "The Adversary" is a fascinating, often sympathetic portrait of a pathological liar who lies first to himself before anyone else.



4. Jean-Cluade Romand... a man, a monster, a mystery. Romand expended an ordinate amount of energy fabricating the kind of image and existence he longed to have, but could never quite realize. From a void, he fashioned a make-believe life. Romand spent decades deceiving his friends, college classmates, his wife and children, his parents, and himself. Obviously brilliant, had Romand expended even half the energy and intellect it took for him to so artfully lie, he probably could have been the man he dreamed of being. However, crippled by depression and a mental disorder for which there is no adequate diagnosis currently available, Romand was but a ghost of a man... a lonely, empty, black hole. Was Romand sociopathic? Perhaps. But the diagnosis of sociopathy does not even begin to describe the mental and emotional vortex into which Romand descended.
   
   Every morning for more than twenty years, dressed in a business suit and pressed shirt, Romand snapped his leather briefcase closed and left his home... to do nothing. Never having graduated from college, never having held a job, having stolen every penny he ever spent, it is beyond comprehension that Romand was capable of deceiving so many for so long. Of all the potentially painful circumstances from which Romand wriggled free with unbelievable lies, his fear of exposure finally came to fruition when he realized he no longer had money or any means of obtaining money. The motive for murdering his children, his wife, and his parents was predicated upon fear... fear of the loss of the man he never was. As his house blazed with fire and smoke choked his lungs, in the end, Romand was not even successful in taking his own life. Cowardice reigned even then.
   
   This book is more than compelling True Crime. The focus of the mnauscript lies not with the Crime, but with the Truth that forever escaped Jean-Claude Romand. Writing masterfully and gracefully, Emmanuel Carrere tells an awe inspiring, tragic story of deception and loss. More bizarre than any fictional novel, THE ADVERSARY is not to be missed.



5. I got this book in the mail yesterday, and finished it today. Wow, what an amazing book.
   
   Carrere explores the moral disintegration of Jean-Claude Romand which begins when he cannot admit his failure at medical school, and culminates eighteen years later when, on the verge of being exposed as a fraud, he massacres his family. As Carrere points out, the problem with Romand's medical school exam could likely have been remedied by a talk with the dean of the medical school; instead, paralyzed by depression, he compounded his problems by a web of lies that gradually engulfed his life. He led his family and friends to believe he was a successful and famous medical researcher for the World Health Organization; in fact, he was not a doctor at all, and when he left home every morning ostensibly to go to work, he actually spent the time in cafes, bookshops, and taking long walks in the woods near the WHO headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland.
   
   This book is unusual in the way Carrere gives a very nuanced and plausible exposition of the path that led Romand from a fairly normal, introverted youth to the role of murderous killer of his family. As I reached the part of the book where Romand kills his family, Carrere has made it so plausible that I found myself nodding in agreement with his decision to do away with his children, his wife, and his parents, and their dogs. This book is very subtle; the author does not resort to any of the stilted ways of thinking that too often take the place of thought when people try to understand horrible crimes. Carrere inserts very dry observations that amused me. Noting that, during his first examinations by psychiatrists after being found to have killed his family, Romand seemed pathetically concerned with making a favorable impression on his psychiatrists, Carrere notes, "He was obviously underestimating the difficulty of giving a favorable impression when one has just murdered one's family after having deceived and defrauded one's relatives for eighteen long years."
   
   After giving this quite compassionate treatment of what led the man to kill his family, Carrere seems to catch himself at the end, and admits that he is shocked by the close friendship that has arisen between Romand and a small group of Christians who minister to inmates. These Christians natter over his comfort in prison: "He already has the blue pullover, which is warm; but it would also be good if he had the grey Polarfleece sweater." Carrere thinks that these people's tenderness toward Romand, and Romand's embrace of Christianity, and its message of forgiveness and redemption, are unseemly in light of the horrific act that Romand committed, and Carrere suggests that Romand's embrace of the message of forgiveness is just another lie that he is telling himself.
   
   I consider this book the equal of another favorite of mine, Janet Malcolm's The Crime of Sheila McGough. Carrere's book has all the depth and nuance of that book.

1 comments about Ill-Gotten Gains: Evasion, Blackmail, Fraud, and Kindred Puzzles of the Law.

1. I'm turning into quite a fan of Leo Katz. I was so impressed by his _Bad Acts and Guilty Minds_ that I picked this one up almost at once. And it's just as good.

   This time around, Katz's plan is to deal with what he calls "three related mysteries": the moral problem of "avoision" (i.e., what counts as morally bad evasion and what merely as legitimate avoidance); the moral nature of e.g. blackmail and insider trading (i.e., what, if anything, justifies our all but universal moral intuitions that these and other similar acts are genuinely wrong); and the problem of "undeserved glory" (and what's wrong with appropriating someone else's fame).

   I won't try to spell out Katz's examples and arguments under each of these headings, for I could not do so if I tried: his discussions are very well organized, but they pass from one subtopic to another with such rapidity and ease that I would have a hard time deciding just what to select. In general I shall say only that even where I disagree with him (as I sometimes do), his lively and provocative analysis is a sheer joy to read.

   His most prominent theme is also one of which I heartily approve. There are some lawyers, philosophers, and especially economists who think it is possible to be both a libertarian and a utilitarian. Katz forcefully disagrees (as do I). And one purpose of this volume is to hammer that point home.

   Himself apparently a libertarian, Katz argues repeatedly and at length that libertarianism requires a deontological foundation; utilitarianism is simply inadequate in every respect. Along the way he also mounts a striking _deontological_ defense of the role of the attorney (in helping clients to avoid malignant moral outrages by "capitalizing on the deontological properties of legal rules," p. 131; you'll have to read the book to find out just what this means). And in one brief passage that one could wish were longer, he follows Amartya Sen to a striking conclusion: libertarianism is _also_ incompatible with complete freedom of contract. As in his earlier book, Katz's own outlook seems to be a sort of self-critical intuitionism along the lines of Judith Jarvis Thomson (whose "trolley problem" also gets a further workout here).

   I wrote in my review of Katz's previous book that it was all but unique. I am happy to say that isn't entirely so; this book is a lot like it. Highly recommended.

3 comments about Stiffed: A True Story of MCA, the Music Business, and the Mafia.

1. The sordid story of how MCA Records got "mobbed up" during music biz mogul Irving Azoff's tenure as company president. Knoedelseder starts off with a powerful narrative, but as it shifts from an industry expose into a Mafia fetish, and then into a trial book, it starts to drag. Still, the first third tells you a lot about the underside of the record business economy, in particular, how "cutout" records and counterfeits get into the stores. After that, you'll learn that mafia strongmen and government prosecutors can both be bad for your health and livelihood, lessons which are always good to keep in mind, even though they're almost self-apparent.



2. Knoedelseder's "Stiffed" is the definitive book on Record/Movie Industry politics. The book reads like a mystery novel, but is all true. The book centers around a bunch of "cutouts," these are records that did not sell due to over supply and were returned to the record company. Cutouts are usually sold to a second party at a steep discount and end up on the
   shelves of Walmart for $2.99. The artist does not receive any money, no royalties
   whatsoever on these items.

   "Stiffed" tells the story how millions of "cutouts" were sold, by way of mafia henchmen
   working out of the offices of MCA records in Universal City, California. This is a story
   of "follow the money." And a story of how Reagan's Justice department interfered in the
   process of trying to prosecute MCA record executives.
   
   At one point in the book, a prosecuting attorney wonders if he is stepping on the toes
   of some strange alliance of some sort of MCA/Mafia/CIA/Iran Contra connection as
   Reagan's Justice department puts the kibosh on his investigation.
   
   Every student of politics should have this book as a reference book. You will see how
   "spin control" is really worked in government, and in a powerful corporation.
   
   I recommend this book highly.




3. Having known some of the people mentioned in this book it makes me want to get out of the industry, or at least go it on my own. At least now in the digital age that is possible. Hopefully the industry has been cleaned up, but I know a lot of it still goes on.

5 comments about Sex, Money And Murder In Daytona.

1. Great Book, I can't believe how many low lifes we have running around the country...Kosta and Deidre are disgusting human beings...And stupid on top of that...Lisa had many clues about her husband and chose to turn the cheek...She new he was doing something with counterfit money and she knew he was a gun freak ..why on earth didnt she do something way before he had her shot...When they were warned both lisa and her brother that Kosta was plotting her death Lisa acted to slow, after she was almost killed at joyland why did she go home she had thoughts that Kosta was involved and yet she went home with him ...Sometimes people really baffle me..In any event its a real good book ...A must read



2. Knowing Kevin(Mark) Ramsey made reading this book very difficult. I thought it was a great book even if I did through it across the room a few times. I like true crime books and this is one of the best I've read.



3. First, if your buying this book thinking it was published in September of 2000 (as they list it) don't buy it! I emailed the help department at Amazon.com and they told me it was published in September of 2000 and it was not! Amazon.com, update and recheck you publication information before you post it--the date was the only reason I purchased the book, which was terrible if you must know.



4. book is drawn out and filled with court scenario. No real base.



5. My original title to this review was The 3 Stooges Plan a Hit. I don't think the site liked my flippant attitude because it was never put on line. However, the villain in this piece has to be one of the most inept plotters I have ever read about. The only reason he stayed out of jail as long as he did was because he was surrounded by people who were incredibly gullible and naturally larcenous and who were only too willing to believe his tall tales or go along with his schemes. The counterfeit scheme alone will leave you amazed.
   
   Read this one for the black humor it provides if you must read it at all.
   
   The boardwalk site that was the background for this story is also back in the news. Progress threatens to bulldoze it. Ah, well, another t-shirt place more or less.

5 comments about A Killer among Us (Onyx True Crime).

1. For the most part, the book is good. I found it entirely too long, though. One thing that amazed me was how the author instructed the reader how to pronounce a fairly simple name like Basile, but left it up to us to decipher Van Iseghem.
   
   Had I not had so much time invested in reading this book, I would have thrown it in the trash once I read the the biased and untrue comments about talk show host Rush Limbaugh that the author wrote.
   
   Although I'm sure Elizabeth DeCaro's family are good people, I would have liked to have less dwelling on them and a more balanced view of all of the people in her life, such as her in-laws.
   
   I'm sure they are nice, but they seemed a little overbearing to me, kind of like they're not able to cut the old apron strings and not interfere with their adult children's lives. Except that they didn't all live together, they practically reminded me of the Ewings from "Dallas."
   
   The book could have been boiled down by about 100 pages and still had the information down. I'm sure Rick was guilty of conspiracy to commit murder. He had it too well orchestrated. It was so obvious.
   
   And, was it really necessary to change the names of the DeCaro children? It took me about two minutes to find out their real names: Ricky, Jodie, Courtney, and Tony.



2. Despite the fact that women are more likely to be killed by their husbands and lovers rather than strangers is a sad fact of reality. The victim was a good woman came from a loving family who would do anything for her. Sadly, greed and her husband's own problems led to planning and killing the mother of his children by getting somebody else to do it. It's still a tragedy in St. Charles, Missouri no matter how many times this happens whether in St. Charles, St. Louis, St. Joseph, or anywhere. It's still a sad fact of life that her children will grow up without a mother around and the father is in prison for the crime and leaving many friends and relatives behind grieving for a lovely Catholic housewife who wanted to have a good marriage and raise her children to be productive adults with all her love. I can only pray that the children are surrounded by her kind and loving relatives now.



3. If you are willing to wade through reference after reference to the perfection of the victim's family, you will actually find an interesting story about Richard DeCaro and how he hired someone to kill his wife, Elizabeth Van Isghem DeCaro. Most interesting is the fact that he beat a conviction on the charge of First Degree Murder in state Court but Federal Authorities were able to avoid the Double Jeopardy Clause and try him for Conspiracy and Murder for Hire in Federal Court; subsequently receiving a conviction.
   
   The one aggravating factor of this book, however, is that repeatedly the reader is subjected to reminders of the perfection of the Van Isghems. A 458 page book could have easily been narrowed to just over 200 pages if this newspaper report turned true crime writer (Bosworth, Jr.) had simply stopped trying to paint a Norman Rockwell portrait of the Van Ishgems. In his attempt to convince us of their perfection, he fails to detail much of DeCaro's background or information his family. DeCaro's family, for the most part, is only given a fleeting glance; and that is when it paints them in a bad light.
   
   I enjoyed the story, but Bosworth will never be considered one of my favorite writers until he learns to break away from the sensationalism of newspaper and write factual true crime.



4. I read the other reviews before I read this book...and it's true, this writer is way too involved with the family of the victim-I have never been near St. Louis and know nothing of the family, but come from a large Roman Catholic family myself and believe me, no family deserves to have two "wonderfuls" before their description...certainly they did not deserve of ask for this hideous crime in any way, but I am disturbed if the writer compromised his own sense of distance to get closer to the story, which is what I am getting here. If I did not know better, would have to think this is one of those true crime books written by a bereaved family member. The story is interesting, so it is a shame that the writer chose to take this approach and/or truly "fell in love" with this family and could not maintain professional judgement or distance. The book would not have been hurt, indeed would have been far easier to read, with much less of the writer's personal feelings for the victim's family coming through in such an obvious manner.
   (Also find it startling to read of the way the matriarch of this family went to such great extremes and deceipt to ensure the children of their murdered daughter would not go into foster car; I find it unlikely that if she had not conducted such a ruse in order to get the father to sign a consent form for custody, that as the natural maternal grandparents they would not have had a chance otherwise, as this book indicates... certainly it would not have been up to the person charged of the murder at that point? Correct me if I am wrong here..)



5. While some of the other reviewers thought the depiction of the family in this case was a bit too syrupy, I didn't get that at all. I know families like that. And it is families like that which produce daughters who are prey for psychopaths: sweet, innocent, loving and giving, bright and talented...
   
   I wish the members of this family had read Sandra Brown's book "How to Spot a Dangerous Man Before You Get Involved" and that ALL women would read it, because it would certainly go a long way toward preventing such tragedies.
   
   It was obvious to me about 1/4 of the way through the book that Rick DeCaro was a psychopath and I kept waiting for the author to approach that angle, but the word sociopath was only mentioned once, toward the end, when it became SO obvious that it would have been odd to NOT mention it.
   
   It is from this angle, that I agree with some of the negative reviews that more attention should have been given to the DeCaro family. Much of the book was a blatant attempt to garner sympathy for a senseless crime when it could have been working on understanding how a creature like Rick DeCaro is born and made. Some token mention was made of the troubled background of Dan Basile, but it wasn't given any really sympathetic treatment as it should have been. I'm not excusing the crimes, I'm just saying that we need to understand social illnesses before we attempt to cure them.
   
   It is also clear that the legal system needs not only some serious re-vamping in order to prevent such tragedies as what happened in DeCaro's first trial, but the legal profession (not to mention the cops) itself needs to be educated about psychopathy - assuming they aren't psychopaths themselves! DeCaro's atty for the Federal case sure fit the profile.
   
   The only person in the whole affair who seemed to really have a clue about Rick DeCaro was Federal Prosecutor Tom Dittmeier. He seems not only to have known what he was dealing with, but how to do it.
   
   Another important thing is that there are actually TWO types of psychopaths depicted in the book: DeCaro and his hitman, Dan Basile. It is a profound example of how nature and nurture combine to produce overt and covert violence. DeCaro was actually the scarier psychopath because his nature was so hidden. He was truly "The Sociopath Next Door".
   
   At the end, we learn that, when she was a child, the victim, Elizabeth DeCaro, KNEW that there was something wrong with the man she ended up marrying - Rick DeCaro - and wrote as much to a schoolfriend in a letter. That is one of the things that Sandra Brown discusses in her book: our "red flag" systems and how to restore them to health and utilize them to avoid predators. Elizabeth had a "red flag", but she ignored it - as we are all taught to do as women and as "good Christians who do not judge others." And, as Good Christians who do not judge others, women continue to marry or associate with such men to their very great peril.
   
   And excellent object lesson for everyone, and a particularly good case for those interested in psychopathology to study.
   
   The trial transcripts that are included are invaluable to help understand just what is wrong with our system and how psychopaths so easily manipulate it and for that reason, I give a higher rating. I wouldn't have the author leave out a thing but he sure could have added a lot more perspective!

5 comments about Over the Edge: The True Story of Four American Climbers' Kidnap and Escape in the Mountains of Central Asia.

1. In Greg Child's book, the four climbers from California go to Kyrgyzstan to climb a type of wall found only there and in Yosemite. They grew up in typical middle class American homes, never having experienced true suffering, hunger or war. While in Kyrgyzstan they are kidnapped and thus confronted with some harsh realities of life for many people in this world.
   
   They read the State Department's warning on travel to that paritcular region of Kyrgyzstan and one of the four climbers was scheduled to go to that country earlier in the year and had his trip canceled due to danger in the area. Despite these red flags, they go to Kyrgyzstan anyway, showing themselves to be the willfully ignorant, self-absorbed, spoiled brats we will come to know throughout the book.
   
   At least one Kyrgyz soldier loses his life (no doubt the sole bread winner in his family supporting their meager existence.) Poverty-stricken villagers show the climbers much hospitality. The four climbers receive a lucrative book deal for their ordeal. Do they share any of the royalties with the suffering Kyrgyz or any of the unfortunate families who had to pay a terrible price for their stupidity? Not a penny.
   
   It is nearly impossible to feel any sympathy for Beth's Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or the broken freindships within the group in the face of their total refusal to accept any responsibility for their kidnapping or any sympathy for the Kyrgyz people. They point their fingers at the Kyrgyz government, individual soldiers, their travel company and the U.S. State department but never, ever indicate that they should have take the responsibility for finding a safe vacation destination themselves.
   
   In light of people like these climbers, I understand why much of the world views Americans as stupid and self-centered. Some of us actually do have a clue as to what's going on around us but unfortunately these fools' stories sell more magazines.
   
   Greg Child's book is interesting to read but also infuriating. He never asks the questions that matter. Did the climbers think they had any culpability for their kidnapping? How has their view of the world and America's place in it changed? Are wealthy American climbers entitled to travel the world to dangerous, back-of-beyond spots and expect the locals to pay the price for getting them out safely? Also, they seemed to have lied about part of their ordeal and Childs goes to great lengths to defend them. I think that Childs doesn't care as much about the truth as he does selling books.



2. As a development worker who lived and worked in Kyrgyzstan during the kidnapping, I can tell you that many parts of this so-called "True Story" are very questionable. One part is true: Four ill-prepared and reckless climbers got kidnapped. The rest of the story is based on their version. Another version puts it this way: They got kidnapped, the kidnappers were not prepared to babysit four climbers and did not have enough food or water for everyone. They got no support from local villagers so they let the climbers go. End of Story.
   
   The climbers say they pushed a kidnapper to his death and then ran the equivalent of a marathon across mountainous terrain with no food or water, after having had no food or water for days.... not likely. In Kyrgyztsan at the time, most ex-pats had the same opinion of these four: "Stupid rich kids in over their heads who greatly exaggerated their story." That's it. Not all that special really.



3. This is one of the Few or maybe Two true storys i have really gotten into.
   This and Lost In A Mountain In Maine .
   
   This book was obviously well written with 4 different points of veiw because there were four climbers. The story's quite amazing and it was soo suspensful i could hardly blink.
   
   One minute they aren't being feed and they are stuck in this weird cave trying to get away , the next they are climbing a steep and most dangerous cliff , the next they are recaptured and put back into the clutches of the enemies , then the NEXT they are throwing the enemies off a cliff. Who could predict what happens?
   
   It's not one of those books that you already can tell what happens or you alreday know everything's going to turn out Happily Ever After.
   Along with the details and Maps givin in the story you really understand where they are and how hard it was for them.
   
   Worth reading! i recommend it to ages 13- and up up up (although i was probably 11 when i read it. Surprisingly i've always been in a high reading level.)



4. I really wanted to read this book because I am interested in the story. But Child's use of the present tense (inconsistently, at that), finally was so irritating that I stopped reading midway through the book. Child is definitely off my author list.



5. I really liked this book. It was an interesting account of the climbers experiences. I only gave it 4 stars because I thought it was overly dramatized at times. Overall, a worthwhile read.

5 comments about Shattered Bonds.

1. I HAD A HARD TIME PUTTING THIS BOOK DOWN. CINDY IS QUITE A GIRL! TRUE CRIME READERS, THIS BOOK IS FOR YOU. GREAT, GREAT, GREAT. I WOULD GIVE IT 4 1/2 STARS IF I COULD.



2. I read a lot of true crime books and did not find a lot of this book to be believable at all. First of all a psych hospital would of never just admit Cindy when just showing up at the hospital like she did!! I also do not believe the treatment that she was goiven while at the hospital,since I did work for 13 years at a psych facility and never once heard of or witnessed anything like this.
   Also AI do not believe her father would of admitted to his guilt the way she said it happened.
   I do believe that her father murdered her mother which is very tragic. I just feel that a lot of the story is not truth and only Cindys version. Which you can tell by the reading of the book that she is not very believable. THe authors did do a good job, but should of verified more of the TRUE facts of the story by other.



3. This book is not very believable at all. THere is to much that does not ring true!



4. The actual murder case seemed interesting, but I just couldn't get very far in this book because the writing was SO BAD! There were endless amounts of dialogue that were just in no way shape or form how actual people speak. It jars you right out of the story when the people in the novel spout stupid nonsense that rings amazingly false. I would like to read about this case in a book written by someone else, someone that leaves out all the useless and stupid yet copious amounts of dialogue.



5. Cindy Ruth Band had everything that she could have possibly imagined, a loving mother and beautiful home in Long Island. Then one August night in the early 1980s, it call came crashing down on her. Her mother's dead body remained at the foot of the basement stairs. Then her father's secret life unraveled about his long-term love affair with widowed socialite and travel agent, Elizabeth Diamond, and Cindy's image of her own family life was completely shattered by lies and deceit by her own father who wanted to have a new life with a new wife. Sadly, Cindy would be tormented and began to deal with the constant torture of her father's abuse, physical and psychological. Cindy was very close with her mother, Florence Shaffer Band, and her death devastated her. In fact, her mother was murdered by her own father. Cindy's life did not go happily after that because of her mother's death. She was heartbroken over the loss and when she tried to recover in Greenwich, Connecticut with other family members then her father brought her home to a house of horrors. Liz became both friend and foe and it isn't until her father's deathbed confession in prison that she learns of Liz's involvement in both her husband and her mother's death. Her father became a murderer twice. Cindy did the unthinkable and forgave him for his crimes even though he tried to kill her and institutionalize in a mental hospital against her will as a trick to discredit her testimony. Cindy's life was never the same and she speaks about the crimes that affected her. I'm sure that she would have been able to tolerate a perfect stranger killing her mother than her own father.

3 comments about Chain of Evidence: A True Story of Law Enforcement and One Woman's Bravery.

1. It feels pointless to write about a book that is out of print. However, this book made me wish for more by the same (pseudonymous) author. I became very interested in the Hell's Angels, and thought a lot about the man who acted as an informant. In my experience, this was a book that really stays with you.



2. Wayne Carlander a Sargent for Orange county division of narcoatics is teamed up with a new partner one Victoria Seele he is not to pleased to have a new partner and that being a woman to boot. But he has a plan they dectectives have been wanting inflitrate the bikers to gather information and Carlander has his chance when he gets Cliff Mowery to turn to be a informant or rat in exchange for early parole and teams him up with investigator seele and go undercover.
   
   Seems like unlikely team victoria is the picture perfect all-american girl you know the perfect cheerleader and cliff a biker with a hatred of cops well known in the biker community and buffed out bad boy the one that all the women secretly fantaisize about.
   
   This follows them in the mid to late 70's as they go undercover and infiltrate the hells angels. But unkown to mrs seele that this will have lasting effects and will change her in ways she could never know in the beginning.
   
   I gave this book 4 1/2 stars even though it was a pretty good book because the author and the author explains this in the forward that he has put in dialogue to keep the interest of the reader and you have to notice this in sections of the book because you know there is no way even through interveiws that he could these accounts so it makes you go How Does he figure that or know and this in turn makes you wonder how much is made up dialogue. But this is a good book so give it a read



3. A unique trip into the anatomy of the toughest of the bikers combined with an exciting, real life drama of undercover work on the edge of disaster.
   
   
   Through his connections in both law enforcment and the biker culture, Detroit has captured a true story that reads like fiction. Mix together one compromised biker willing to trade his fellow bikers for a get out of jail free card, a beautiful undercover deputy sheriff willing to ride with the bikers and law enforcement constrained by the rules of the game and you have one hell of a story.
   
   The writing style has the tight feel of a screenplay where more emotional content will be added on the sound stage. The absense of emotion does however add to both the reality and the stark terror of a very dangerous undercover operation running on the edge of disaster.
   
   The result of the operation was spectacular with dozens of felony arrests and numerous convictions.
   
   Highly recommended.
   
   It is sad that for whatever reason, perhaps the desire of some involved to continue living, that this story has not made it to the screen.