Customer Reviews

Cold Blooded (St. Martin's True Crime Library)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

At the risk of being callous--since this book recounts a true story that brought death & pain to real people--the most astonishing thing about Carlton Smith's outstanding "Cold-Blooded" is that it turns out sometimes the consequences even of murder are just downright funny.
The last half of the book takes on the quality of the classic noir film "Blood Simple," with a murder victim who just won't die & a couple of murderers caught up in a waking nightmare, trundling their would-be victim around in a wheelchair, preventing searches of the trunk of their car only as a last-second afterthought, surrounded by hundreds of witnesses, improvising their way through an appalling crime.
"Cold-Blooded" is very well done. The three key characters are Larry McNabney (murder victim), Elisa McNabney (grifter) & Sarah Dutra (grifter's apprentice). Smith gives life to all three for us. He takes a complicated series of crimes--those involving financial dealings at a law office could've been particularly distracting--& handles them brilliantly, not bogging the reader down or allowing the narrative to be distracted by some of the potentially fascinating but ultimately dead-end subplots.
This should be a movie. Cast correctly, with a good screenplay, it would be excellent.
Until you've read the book, you're maybe not going to understand how there could be humor in the story. Safe to say that all three main characters' stories resolved in exactly the ways that the three people had been living their lives. They made their choices, and they resulted in predictable outcomes. It's hard to feel too much sympathy for any of them.
I always grapple with Amazon's rating system when it comes to true crime, because there are the true classics of the genre ("In Cold Blood," etc.) & then everything else & it seems so unfair to judge all on the same scale. However, I have no hesitation giving Smith's book five stars. It's an excellent piece of writing that takes voluminous research & parses it into an extraordinary, compelling story. Well done!

This book was written almost perfectly. As a true crime reader I go through many books and find the Author stays on one situation to long or goes over and over again on it and then the suspense leaves and/or I have to skip a few pages here and there because they drag out the history of the town and then drag out the trial. This Book did neither. The Author did a wonderful job. It was a horrible story of Murder and greed and you will not be able to put down the book.

P.S. I have to correct the poster "Rick Eeee".She posted that the Victims wife was a Lawyer. This is not true Elisa was not a Lawyer.

Typically I am not much of a Carlton Smith true crime fan; however, I found Cold Blooded to be a tremendous piece of writing for the true crime genre. Most often writers are prone to present a bit of background, followed or preceeded by the known details of the crime and then the remainder of the book is generally the trial and sentencing of the accused; and, more often than not, is written almost word for word from trial transcripts.

Not so in Cold Blooded! There is NEVER a dull moment in this book! The life and doings of Laren (aka Elisa) Jordan/McNabeney is better than any beauty salon gossip any day! And Carlton Smith details these events in a fast paced, attention gripping style that makes putting this book down difficult!

Highly, highly recommended for true crime fans!

If you are used to the quality of Ann Rule, you will be deeply disappointed. Smith often has not researched the history and will generously use phrases such as "this area is a little murky" or "not much is known about this time period" etc. Very frustrating. Also the time line is very confusing.
Not impressed.

Reviewer Jim Greenhill's analogy with the Coen brothers Blood Simple, a modern film noir was excellent. The thing great about this is that it's real. Much sadness and heartbreak but I thought this was a very well written book and I've read a lot of true crime. I firmly believe the saying "Truth is stranger than fiction," and this is once again confirmation on that point. The book and characters are unbelivable and twisted but most are frighteningly unaware that they are so. Even the main character is a person who seems driven to do what she does. It brings questions to mind about hereditary factors, brain chemistry or maybe the idea that there may or may not be good and evil

I was looking forward to reading this book after watching a fascinating account of the case on CourtTV's "The Investigators." Sadly, Carlton Smith's account of the Larry McNabney murder is a real disappointment. CourtTV focused on Deborah Scheffel, the detective who broke the case; Smith builds his narrative around the misadventures of Elisa, Larry, and Sarah Dutra and makes the detectives minor players. Due to an apparent lack of information, Smith resorts to filling page after page with speculation and guesswork about what might have happened between these three bizarre characters. The story -- at least as Smith presents it -- has no tension or momentum at all. In the last third of the book, dealing with the events after Sarah's arrest, Smith simply quotes huge chunks of police interview transcripts in which Sarah babbles away in a self-serving manner. The whole book feels inadequately researched and lazily written.

One other thing: the back cover promises "8 pages of alarming photographs." That's probably the biggest exaggeration I've ever seen on a true crime book. Yes, there are eight pages of photos, but they are about as "alarming" as watching ice melt.

I knew Larry McNabney and found both truth and fiction in this book. Even though some of the areas were vague, I do think Carlton Smith did a decent job of writing about a crime. He inviewed people were vaste opinions. And I felt he might have fallen for Sarah and Elisa. Neither of which could be trusted. But I will always remember Larry saying "Get Ink". It doesn't matter what anyone says about you, just as long as they print your name correctly.

This book was just okay. The storyline is excellent for true crime, but the author's presentation is bland. I had a constant feeling of "the book is gonna get really good now", and while it is good, it never drew me in to where I couldn't put it down.

I would rate this book with seven complete stars (no three-quarter, half, or quarter stars for me!) if Amazon would let me.

This book is simply great. Here are the reasons you should read it:

1. Irresistibly Seductive.
2. California attorney Larry McNabney was a wealthy and well-connected legal lawyer that owned a champion show horse.
3. His lawyer wife named Elisa reported him missing in, or around September, 2001.
4. Elisa claimed he abandoned her after a heated argument and joined a cult and said that he was tired of being a lawyer, tired of her, and just plain tired.
5. The book is lethally cunning.
6. Larry's lawyer body found in a not to deep grave on or about three months later.
7. Elisa was gone.
8. She drove off in red convertible Jaguar with a missing hub cap on the left rear tire.
9. Elisa's brown hair now bleached blonde, and going by a new name of a AKA Mrs. McNabney was caught speeding toward a new life in Florida, and with, believe it or not a brand new spanking identity.
10. Who was Elisa McNabney? (She was a female fugitive wanted in the murder of her trusting lawyer husband. She was an insinuating beauty with 038 aliases, and a rap (not as in music, rap as in crime rap sheet like OJ) sheet 113 pages long whose criminal career was about to come undone.
11. In the wake of Elisa's stunning confession and conviction, there was one more shocking surprises yet to come from the deadly black widow who killeded her lawyer husband and murdered (redrumed) here prized horse.

I have given you 11 good reasons to buy this book. I will not give you twelve since I don't like dozen's. I always liked the metric system and think that everything should be counted in tens and not twelves.

The author is a good author and you should buy this book. It may give you some good ideas.

Bye for now.

Signed,
Erica Phillips
(This murder / redrum didn't happen in Decatur)