Customer Reviews

Every Breath You Take: A True Story of Obsession, Revenge, and Murder

5 star:		(64)
4 star:		(30)
3 star:		(18)
2 star:		(18)
1 star:		(11)

 

 

As a long-time reader of Ann Rule, I am pleased to say that this is her best book yet. While reading this unbelievable story, you will feel like you personally know the characters. Of all of Rule's protagonists, Allen Blackthorne is the most intriguing. He had everything anyone could want, and really nothing to gain by killing his ex-wife, but just couldn't allow her to slip away from his grasp. Well researched and written!

I I hesitate to say that "Every Breath" doesn't live up Rule classics (If You Really Loved Me, Small Sacrifices) - books should be judged on their own merit - but the fact remains it isn't one of her best. However, a lesser Ann Rule is still pretty good, and "Every Breath" has one amazing character, Allan Blackthorne. He is despicable, fascinating, and absorbing. Rule relates his tumultuous childhood with compassion, yet without even a hint of making excuses.

I have to agree with other readers that Rule is not critical enough of Sheila. Rule is a good enough writer to allow us to feel compassion for a creep like Allan, she ought to have trusted her readers enough to depict Sheila more honestly and still feel horrified at what happened to her. Sheila stays with Allan after he murders a motorcyclist (in her presence) and bankrupts her parents, and this is never viewed critically. Sheila is simply the passive, perfect victim for whom Rule makes excuses. After Sheila eventually leaves Allan (hurrah!) she marries another controlling, violent man. Jamie is clearly a thousand times better than Allan, but when confronted with Sheila's two rebellious teenage daughters he reacts with physical violence. A more compassionate man might have seen that these girls had experienced a lot of chaos and pain in their short lives, and needed patience, not a drill sergeant. I can't begin to imagine the pain this man experienced, yet I remain critical of Jamie. Perhaps Rule was required to depict Sheila and Jamie in such a positive light to get cooperation for the book, it feels very sanitized. Sheila's memory might have been better served by more honesty.

Ann Rule usually does a good job -- this time her editors let her down. There are so many repeated thoughts, concepts and facts that one gets tired. On Page 143 she actually re-states the birth weights of the quads twice -- differently! Later on she talks about Allen taking a reverse position (180) and labels it a "360." The subject matter is good, but getting through it was very difficult.

This book was recommended to me by a friend who said it was great. Being from San Antonio, I was looking forward to reading a true-crime book that took place in the Alamo City; however, I was deely disappointed.

The book reads as if Ms. Rule cut-and-pasted her interview notes together. She never gives any psychological depth to any of her characters nor does she follow through with expecting detail. For instance, on p.146, Sheila's mother recounts how Maureen, Blackthorne's wife after Sheila, calls Sheila on the phone and is screaming. Gene says, "Someone on the other end was screaming so loud," Gene said, "that I could hear it across the kitchen. It was Maurreen. Sheila spoke to her very calmly, and said, 'I tried to warn you, Maureen, and now I have a life and a fmaily, and I can't be involved in your problems wit Allen.'" Tell me, Ms. Rule, what problem was Maureen having? Give us the full details.

Another example on p. 101: "Most of Sheila's closest women friends knew that she was terribly concerned that Allen might be sexually abusing Stevie, but the signs were so subtle that she didn't have anything that she could prove." So tell me, what were the subtle signs?

It's as if Rule is too afraid to go into too much depth for fear that she will offend the reader. Rule mistakes detail for depth.

As usual, Ann Rule, in this book, went to great lengths to research even the tiniest detail regarding the case. However, in this case, Rule made a very long novel out of a case that would have been good at short story or novella length.

In no way, of course, do I mean to discount the victim, who was horribly murdered. However, as Ann Rule's true crime cases go, this was a major disappointment for me. I was so overwhelmed by detail that I could hardly make out the story itself. Rule seemed to have sewn her story out of the most infinitesimal stitches.

The murder itself, which I would have thought would be the climax, was so anti-climactic that it got lost like a <poof> or a <piffle> in the midst of thousands of words.

Rule generally is able to weave an excellent story between vast research and hard facts, but here she seems to have gotten lost in the details. I had the strongest feeling she'd cut-and-pasted her facts into the book itself.

This is not an Ann Rule book I'd recommend. I was thrilled to see the publication of a new Ann Rule book, thrilled enough that I couldn't possibly have waited for the paperback. What a disappointment this was!

I'm a huge true crime fan, a very big Ann Rule fan, yet this one didn't do it for me. To me, Small Sacrifices was a masterpiece. This one was loaded w/unnecessary detail, yet she sometimes left out stuff that the reader would consider important ... for instance - Stevie's sexual abuse allegations against her father seemed to scare Alan, so they must've had merit .... yet it was really never delved into in the story. Another thing - while this crime was about as bad as it gets, and I hope those 4 losers rot in jail for what they did - Sheila was a bit unsympathetic at times. Ann Rule could have at least acknowledged that, rather than chalking it up to being in love, or being afraid. And Jamie was a jerk! I had a hard time understanding why she allowed him to discipline the girls that harshly (11-12 yrs old, being slapped in the face?).

I've read all of Ann Rule's books, including her pseudonymous ones. They are invariably compelling studies of both victims and killers. This time out, it seems as if Rule was so fearful of saying anything negative about Sheila Bellush (the victim) that the woman is scarcely more than a shadow. Her ex-husband Allen is, in true Rule fashion, defined so thoroughly that he comes across in all his horrifying reality. So do Sheila's second husband Jamie, her two daughters from Allen; even her four quads feel real. But Rule is so cautious in her descriptions of Sheila herself that the book becomes very heavy-going, very one-sided as a result. As well, because so much detail is paid to the litigious battles engaged in by Allen and Sheila in the ten years after their divorce, one has to wonder why a woman who believed her ex-husband was very capable of killing her would (despite her desire to provide for her children) constantly seek to even the score with him in a courtroom.

I do not believe, ever, in blaming the victim, but I think in failing to deliver a clear picture of Sheila, we're left with the extraordinary tale of a woman in fear of her life, yet not so fearful that she'd stop poking a stick into the cage holding the lion. Given how well every other character (even the most minor ones) are defined, it's a great pity that the central character remains so shadowy and undefined.

This book simply isn't on the same level as Dead By Sunset or And Never Let Her go--tales that show just what Rule can do when she pulls out all the stops.

Ann Rule is one of my favorite authors, but it's been years since I've seen a book in print with as many typos as this one contains. Were they rushing to meet a deadline? It doesn't look like they even bothered to run SpellCheck. Ann, if you read this, please have your team go over your manuscript again before they go to paperback!

I'm a big Ann Rule fan. I eagerly await all of her books. However, for the first time I felt that this book was not up to the usual readability. It went into way too much detail at the beginning of the book. It wound us into intricate family detail before we really cared about the characters themselves. Then about 3/4 of the way through the book, I felt like there were entirely too many (boring) details about the men related to the killing. Keeping these guys straight seemed a bit difficulton more than one occasion. The story itself is absorbing, and I understand that we needed to know about the characters' family upbringing. However, many of the details should have been condensed or left out. Unfortunately this is the first of Ann's books that I will not recommend to others as a "can't put down" book.

For the most part, I have been a big fan of Ann Rule. But lately, she's been just throwing them out and they just aren't that good. I couldn't bear reading this book for more then fifteen minutes at a time. It was so repetitious and monotonous that I would fall asleep. Why did we have to read about Sheila and Alan's grandparents and what did it have to do with her murder? The victim herself, while she certainly did not deserve her fate, was not really that likable. She seemed alittle self absorbed and turned her face to alot of bad things that Alan did. The book just went on and on with needless information. It didn't leave you wanting more, this was the first book I actually couldn't wait to finish. If you want to read a truly good true crime book, I recommend "Salt of the Earth" by Jack Olsen.