Customer Reviews

Lethal Embrace

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I have read and reviewed on this site FROM THE MOUTH OF THE MONSTER, an outstanding book by Robert Mladinich, and BETRAYAL IN BLOOD, by Michael Benson, which has to be one of the worst true crime books ever written.
I decided to read LETHAL EMBRACE hoping that Mladinich's grace and intelligence would be in evidence. Well, it is not.
For those reviewers who praise Mladinich's writing in this book, I am certain that he had almost nothing to do with the finished written product. As a former NYC detective who would have had access to other police officials, he was probably primarily responsible for the research, such as it is, which seems to have consisted mainly of the reading and copying of police and court documents. If you are looking for any in-depth study which would give some real insight into what created the psyches and personalities which led the book's main players to act as they did, don't bother. The concept here is shallow - totally different, unfortunately, than Mladinich's intelligent and careful work in FROM THE MOUTH OF THE MONSTER. Having read, as I stated, BETRAYAL IN BLOOD, which is credited to Benson alone, I can testify that the writing in LETHAL EMBRACE is identical. And, folks, that ain't a good thing.

I am an avid and veteran reader of true crime, and I have never seen a writer who manages to combine numbing repetition and voluminous filler with just plain lazy and incompetent writing - along with a pinch of the absurd - as uniquely as Michael Benson. This shall henceforth be known as The Bensonian Method. What follows will be examples from LETHAL EMBRACE - possibly a few too many, but a fraction of those available:

1.On page 17, Benson introduces us to Peter Casserly, a man who, other than giving CPR to shooting victim Alex Algeri, has no other role in the story and is never seen again. Nevertheless, Benson tells us that Casserly was "a member of the Village of Amityville's Board of Trustees, the body that met on the second and fourth Mondays of the month to govern the seaside community. Casserly was a member of the Board of Trustee's Fire Protection Committee." Why we should care about any of this, since it pertains to a totally peripheral character, is open to question, but it is a masterful example of Benson's use of filler, and the fact that he actually includes the Board's meeting schedule, provides a nice touch of Bensonian absurdity. He does exactly the same thing in BETRAYAL IN BLOOD.

2. The murder of Alex Algeri takes place in Amityville, NY. Predictably, in what I hope is his quest to meet his required number of pages rather than his thinking that it is actually appropriate or interesting, Benson provides us with over 4 pages about THE AMITYVILLE HORROR. The fact that it has nothing at all to do with the story elevates it's inclusion to the level of Bensonian filler. See pages 32-34 in BETRAYAL IN BLOOD for a similarly bizarre example, about the TV show BEWITCHED, of this technique.

3. Page 56 provides an interesting combination of absurdity and filler. Benson writes, "Through the miracle of today's computerized world with its sophisticated network of law enforcement information, it was only minutes before Detective Anderson learned a great deal about Scott Paget."
"THE MIRACLE OF TODAY'S COMPUTERIZED WORLD"??? This sounds like a high school student trying to stretch one page worth of material into five pages of writing. And it also sounds ridiculous. "In minutes, Detective Anderson had obtained a great deal of computerized information about Scott Paget." would seem to have been adequate.

4. Then there is the repetition. On page 106, Rocco and Scott "went to a chop shop in the Hunts Point section of the Bronx. The chop shop was owned by a friend named Tony. It was there that they acquired the New York State license plates for the van." On page 112, Benson writes, "They went to the Hunts Point section of the Bronx, where they purchased a New York State license plate to be attached over the Florida plate. He knew a guy named Tony who provided this license plate service."

On page 148, we find an almost perfect Bensonian illustration of the idea that no inclusion, no matter how absurd, is worth re-considering or removing: "On February 7, 2003, Michael Fiaccabrino gave a sworn statement to the Suffolk County police. He began by stating his name, Michael Fiaccabrino..." Presumably Benson saw fit to include this information to drive home the point that Fiaccabrino's name did not change between the first and second sentences.

These examples actually show, in cameo form, the format of the whole book. This technique, when used over a large portion of a book, ceases to produce amused disbelief and morphs into complete and utter boredom. This book is 372 pages long. If it were competently and honestly written, there might be 150-200 pages of material. So what is a true crime writer with no real interest in writing a well thought out and researched book to do?
Well, what Benson does is as follows: The lead Detective, Robert Anderson, on the Algeri murder case interviewed a lot of people. Benson records, word for word, the results of these verbal investigations. When the interviews were concluded, Anderson then had the interviewees record on paper the answers they had just given him. Benson then procedes to record, word for word, the information that has just been reduced to written form, WHICH IS THE EXACT SAME INFORMATION HE HAS JUST REPORTED FROM THE VERBAL INTERVIEWS.
Page 107, from Rocco Salniero's verbal statement to Anderson: '"I drove past the front of the gym and then turned right. I drove past the rear parking lot, where we saw the black Yukon truck in the back of the building, so I made a U-turn and parked next to the building." "What time was it?" Detective Anderson asked. "About 7:30, 8 o'clock at night," Rocco replied.'
Page 113, from Rocco's written statement, "He wrote that he drove past the front of the gym and made a right just after he had passed the building. He drove past the rear parking lot, saw that there was a black Yukon parked there.....He made a U-turn on the dark street which he remembered was lined with houses. He parked on the street where they could have a clear view of the gym's back door. By this time, he wrote, it was 7:30 or 8 at night."
I neglected to mention earlier that shameless cynicism is also a component of the Bensonian Method.

There is one difference though, from BETRAYAL IN BLOOD, in LETHAL EMBRACE.
This is only supposition on my part, but while Benson is clearly not writing for literate adults, he may just be on the cutting edge of writers trying to expand the true crime experience to children. What leads me to this thought is that on page 16, early enough to grab the kiddies' attention, Benson writes, "Yeah, he wanted to get out of the business, but...KA-CHING! How could he unload a gold mine like this?"
And, finally, on page 73 he writes, "The place they met -the "gentlemen's club" (wink, wink) was called the Carousel." Though presumably any moderately intelligent adult would have understood the meaning of the quotation marks, Benson may have included the (wink, wink) for his more innocent younger readers. Some of you may think that I've crossed the line and am now just viciously fabricating negatives. But folks, I'm not making that up! He actually wrote (wink, wink)!!!

Shortly after I reviewed BETRAYAL IN BLOOD, in what was clearly an orchestrated campaign, four "reviewers", in the space of two days, wrote 2 or 3 sentence "reviews" of the book, which while not really dealing with the book itself, proclaimed it to be the apex of true crime writing and Michael Benson to be the best true crime writer ever. It was almost touching in that the orchestration of this event was as clumsy and inept as the book they were pretending to review. I can only hope that if this ploy is attempted again after this review, it will be accomplished with a
little more sophistication. I would also hope that this time the reviews are written by people who have actually read the book.

As a footnote for those who may be interested in further exploring the phenomenon which is the Bensonian Method, I wholeheartely recommend an outstanding review posted on Amazon by Elizabeth A. McCabe, which she has entitled "Horribly written, Repetitive" of another Benson-Mladinich collaboration called HOOKED UP FOR MURDER.

LETHAL EMBRACE continues what Benson started in BETRAYAL IN BLOOD, in that it is an untalented, lazy and numbing telling of a story that would be unremarkable if it were told well. There is no reason to waste your time or money on this book. (Wink, wink).

Lethal Embrace is masterfully written. The book chronicals what transpired between an abused wife, her mother, her mother's lover and several others in a botched attempt to kill her husband. Instead, they killed the wrong man in this notorious case that took place in Amityville, Long Island. It's a great read and I would highly recommend it whether or not you're a true crime fan. I was so engrossed reading this on the plane that I didn't want the flight to end.

What makes this account of deception and murder so seductive is Mladinich's skill - as a former NYPD Detective - at interweaving the tangled relationships in this suburban-based murder "mystery" and bringing it to its unbelievable yet ultimately true horrifying ending. No one gets into the mind of a killer like Mladinich - as he did with the Long Island serial killer Joel Rifkin - and no one puts it so explicitly on the written page. As the details of the plot to commit the murder are unraveled before your eyes, you will be gripping the binding hoping against hope that the inevitable end does not occur ... regretfully, it does. A True Crime masterpiece.

I'm going to have to disagree with the other reviewers when I say that this book is simply....boring! The story of Lee Ann Redeil and her lover, Rocco, who plot to kill Lee Ann's Husband, Paul, but inadvertantly kill the wrong man, Paul's friend Alex Algeri, is all too common in America anymore. Then, when the story is writing from a Detective's point of view, you get much of the hum-drum information that you really could have lived without. Much of the information is repeated over and over in various chapters of the book. I frequently found myself skimming through chapters because I had already read (and comprehended it the first time) what was being presented.

What I did find interesting about this book (and it was likely not to have been interpreted this way), was that there was plenty of reasonable doubt as related to Lee Ann's role in the murder of Alex Algeri. Detectives seemed positive that Lee Ann had a role; I, on the other hand, found that the state did not prove their case against her and an acquital was in order. However, such was not to happen, as the trials of Lee Ann and Rocco were skewed from the beginning by many things including double juries and an "unlawful" judge.

I recommend reading it for yourself. Irregardless of how your mind operates when it comes to crime, there is something in it for you...even if you have to skim the pages to find it!

I watched this case on the Oxygen Network show Snapped and was shocked by it. I mean being an innocent victim just getting some CD's from your car and then getting shot. The book dragged on at times and repeated the same thing over and over at times.

I feel sorry for everyone involved from Alex's family who lost their beloved son and brother, to Lee Ann for not knowing that there were other alternatives than to plan the murder of her husband, Paul for having such a difficult past and having to live with his best friend being murdered instead of him. I saw him on Larry King 4 years ago being interviewed about the case and it does appear that he is a very loving father and realizes that he must set an example for his son. I went on the publishers website and he had written a review of the book and he stated that his son is doing great and he is happily remarried with a baby on the way. Most of all I feel sorry for Nicholas who will not know his biological mother and will find out the truth of this terrible crime.

Like the title of my post. Fascinating story but not so great writing.

I'm a fan of Bob Mladinich first true crime account of New York serial killer Joel Rifkin ("From the Mouth of the Monster") ... I've also had the pleasure of meeting the big guy (Mladinich) and he's the real thing. This is a very well research and written account of a fascinating crime.

this book brought me to tears numerous times. i have a personal connection with the family and know lee ann as a human being. the events were beyond tragic. however, the book tends to harp on things. there is plenty of useless information. not enough time was focused on lee ann and her family as human beings. i am, however, grateful that it does not outright portray her as a monster and it does focus on what a freak show her ex husband was. it is a good read, just remember to take everything with a grain of salt and all that you read is not factual.

My review rating is between Bryan mackay's - A TRUE CRIME MASTERPIECE - and K. Cantrell's - A CLICHE MURDER, AND THE BORING DETAILS THAT FOLLOW. I have read many, many true crime books and this book did not keep my interest as much as some others I have read. I think it was because of the repetiveness that K. Cantrell mentions. Peter Wood "WriterFighter" - FIRST-TIME CRIME READER - states that it was somewhat repetitive, but it was repetitive in a good way to him. It wasn't for K. Cantrell and me. It seemed like filler to me. It was very sad that an innocent man, who by all accounts was a great guy, was killed by mistaken identity. I had much empathy for his family. I felt that Lee Ann's mom, Pat Armanini, and her lesbian lover, Elizabeth "Liz" Budroni, should have been held more accountable. It was Liz who started asking around for someone to hurt Lee Ann's husband, Paul Riedel, and it was her who first introduced Lee Ann to the shooter. Liz and Pat were both in on the meetings to discuss doing something bad to Paul. Either one of them could have gone to the police with the information and maybe prevented the tragedy.

Lethal Embrace is a true story that proves once again "Crime Doesn't Pay." All of the particpants are now in jail and an innocent man is dead. The authors take the reader step by step through the complicated case of mistaken identity and murder. They portray all sides fairly. Lee Ann Riedel can protest her innocence all she wants, but its clear that she wanted her husband dead and conveyed that message to those who did her did her biddling. That inescapable truth led to the pulling of the trigger by her lover. I followed the original trial with interest and enjoyed the book immensely. I highly recommend it fo rthose who like the true crime genre.

That I enjoyed most about reading Lethal Embrace was its skilled, no-nonsense, methodical reportage. Yes, it was somewhat repetitive, but it was repetitive in a good way--the way in which a skilled carpenter hammers home the nail.
What was amazing to me was this: Mladinich and Benson, two highly-skilled writers, held my attention to the very last page even though the outcome of the trial, and the killers, were known at the onset. How did they do it? Well, they did it with fine writing; feeding the reader with choice pieces of information; delectible facts were stressed and empasized, and their bizzare plot of intrigue kept creeping forward at all times. This was an engrossing tale of human depravity.