Series: Ann Rule's Crime Files | Publication Date: January 2, 2001
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In this unnerving collection drawn from her personal crime files, "America's best true-crime writer" (Kirkus Reviews) Ann Rule brilliantly dissects the convoluted love affairs that all too often end in violence.
Expertly analyzing a shocking, headline-making case, Rule unmasks the deadly motives inside a seemingly idyllic marriage: a beautiful young wife, a rising star in America's top-ranked computer corporation, and a prosperous husband, the scion of a family building business. With an adorable son and a gorgeous home, the couple seemed to have it all. But a furtive evil permeated their days and nights, dragging them into a murky world of drugs, sordid sex, and con operations. In this realm, one of them would prove to be a virtual innocent, the other a manipulator with no conscience. Sudden, violent death brought their charade of a fairy-tale romance to a tragic end -- with a brutal crime that might never have come to light were it not for the stubborn detectives and prosecutors whose fight for justice spanned an entire decade.
Empty Promises recounts several other cases where the search for love brought only lies and betrayal -- a cautionary primer, perhaps, for those who trust too much too soon. Powerful because they strike so close to home, the cases in Empty Promises will leave readers shaken by the realities of love gone terribly -- and fatally -- wrong.
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'The undisputed master crime writer of the Eighties and Nineties' John Saul 'Devastatingly accurate insight' NEW YORK TIMES
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
I am an author of true-crime books, and I'm now working on my 25th and 26th: NO REGRETS and TOO LATE TO SAY GOODBYE. I have lived in the Seattle Area for many years. Before that, I grew up in Michigan and Pennsylvania, and lived in Texas, Oregon, and near Niagara Falls, N.Y. I always wanted to be a police officer--because my grandfather was a sheriff in Michigan. I joined the Seattle Police Department when I was 21, worked a year and a half, but then I couldn't pass the eye test. After five years of rejection slips, I finally sold my first article for $35! Soon, I found my niche when I began writing for the fact-detective magazines like TRUE DETECTIVE in 1970, and I wrote more than a thousand homicide cases, and went to hundreds of trials. My first book, THE STRANGER BESIDE ME, was about Ted Bundy, but, amazingly, I had the book contract to write about an unknown killer six months before Bundy was identified as the "Ted Killer." And I had known him all along, and didn't realize it; he was my partner in the all-night shift at Seattle's Crisis Clinic! Oddly, I started out writing humor, but unless you are Erma Bombeck, Garrison Keillor, or Fanny Flagg or Dave Barry, it's hard to make a living. Now I write humor for fun and for my friends.
I graduated in Creative Writing from the U of Washington, with minors in criminology and psychology. I also have an AA degree in law enforcement, taking classes in crime scene investigation, arrest, search and seizure, crime scene photography and forensic science. I've lectured in seminars all across America to detectives, prosecutors, and even at the FBI Academy. My subjects have been serial murder, high profile offenders, and women who kill. I write two books every year--one hardcover single-case book, and one Ann Rule's True Crime Files original paperback. Although people tend to think I write only about the Northwest, I go wherever the cases are most interesting. I've written about murder cases in Florida, Georgia, New York, Kansas, Texas, Hawaii, and California, too.
I raised five children on my own--starting out with articles for baby care magazines, Sunday features, true confessions, and then "slicks" like Cosmopolitan, Ladies' Home Journal, Good Housekeeping, and Reader's Digest. Now, my children are grown.
I like to keep in very close touch with my readers, and I'm able to do that with a weblog and a guestbook on my website pages at www.annrules.com This also gives readers a chance to talk with each other, and its' a pretty lively spot--as I'm sure this page will be.
To choose a book subject, I weed through about 3,000 suggestions from readers. I'm looking for an "anti-hero" whose eventual arrest shocks those who knew him (or her): attractive, brilliant, charming, popular, wealthy, talented, and much admired in their communities--but really hiding behind masks.
I'm a reader myself, and I always have several books going at once--one upstairs, downstairs, near the bathtub, in my car, and beside my hammock (in the summer, of course!)
This review is from: Empty Promises (Mass Market Paperback)
As expected from the files of true crime writer Ann Rule, EMPTY PROMISES is as frightening of an anthology a reader will find because the tales really happened. The premise behind the collection is not all relationships end in a happily ever after. Some end in violent death in which the killer betrayed the love and trust of their victim.
The ten stories, including the "novel" length title piece, of
EMPTY PROMISES all hinge on a glib predator taking advantage of love to the point that perhaps it is better to not have loved and lived than to love at all. Each tale is haunting because they can easily happen to family, friends, and readers. Although not for everyone, this book proves Ms Rule still rules the true crime genre.
Harriet Klausner
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This review is from: Empty Promises (Mass Market Paperback)
I wait breathlessly for every book Ann Rule puts out, but I'll begin to breathe easier now. Her last few books, this one included, have not lived up to the earlier promise of such titles as "Small Sacrifices," "The Stranger Beside Me," and "If you really love me." Granted, the crimes in her latest books have not been as spectucular, the criminals not as incomprehensible as those in earlier books, but it does seem that the publishers are rushing her to put out books to satisfy readers like me--rather than giving Rule adequate time to find a criminal type and do what she does best -- explore his/her background and bring him/her to life for the reader. Too many of the stories in "Empty Promises" are empty of Rule's talent for sketching out the criminal character. Too many read no better than a newspaper account--they leave you wanting to know more rather than wanting to read more.
It makes me sad, but that's my take
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This review is from: Empty Promises (Mass Market Paperback)
Ann Rule says "I often say that what real people do can be so heroic, bizarre, savage, and completely unpredictable that no fiction writer could have pulled it out of her imagination."
No living person * chronicles those things that real people do better than Ann Rule does when she is in her stride. But Ms. Rule is a "marathoner" and these "sprints" are not her strength. There are many more "I"s (first person narrative) in this book than in most books of the true crime genre - but that is probably a "good thing" as it is evident that Ms. Rule becomes deeply involved with the stories and cases which she covers. She describes herself as a "fact-detective." This is her 7th volume of "chaff" (cases that didn't make it into full length books) from her files. The longer title story in this compilation is the best - because the author excels at getting those close to her cases to talk to her - thereby giving her readers that "YOU ARE THERE" feeling. Of the shorter work-ups, the case told in "A Dangerous Mind" is eerily prescient of the Jon Benet Ramsey case almost 20 years later - but with better crime solvers.
The shorter stories here are too short - depriving the reader of the author's forte. I prefer the "Whole Grain" of her full-length works such as "Small Sacrifices" "The Stranger Beside Me" "Dead By Sunset" "Bitter Harvest" et al.
* Truman Capote is deceased, otherwise Ann would be second best.
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