Customer Reviews

Signed in Blood: The True Story of Two Women, a Sinister Plot, and Cold Blooded Murder (St. Martin's True Crime Library)

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The story of two women who murder transients for profit is riveting but not particularly well-written. The author repeats several times the details of the murders and the evidence presented in court, but tells us little about the backgrounds of the perps. What makes women in their 70s murder apparently for the first time? We get through the entire book without any kind of answer. What we have is reportage without interpretation. You can read the first 100 pages and put it down, having discovered all the author knows about the case.

I could not WAIT to start this book, since I had read the bare details in the news. I agree with the reviewer who says that the author did not research this book too well. Seems they read the news story and stretched it out! We hear hints of previous illegal acts on their part...but no details!! No delving into the reasons for their greedy acts, very little childhood info on them, which I believe is essential to understand most criminal acts.

Not a bad book, but could have been so much more, given the chilling mix of 2 elderly ladies and murder for insurance money.

Ann Rule, please write this book!!

Also, MUST say how much I appreciate these customer reviews!! Thanks, Amazon!

An interesting story, no doubt, but a poorly written book. We have none of the elements of good true crime writing. The victims and the perpetrators are not fleshed out...we have little about what happened between these two ladies over the time they knew each other and nothing other the bare facts of the case, described over and over and over again. Why go through the preliminary hearing and then the trial when almost all of the information was the same. You can't write a good true crime book without making it compelling. Repeating dry and boring court transcripts for over half the book is ridiculous and I only finished it because I hate putting a book down unread. Basically it was a waste of time. You would have gotten as much information just by reading the newspaper articles or the stuff on the internet. This writer will definitely not make it to my list of writers to watch. After reading Cruel Death by M. William Phelps, this was definitely not what I should have picked up next. Like going from the zenith to the nadir of true crime reporting.

Imagine this: Two seemingly sweet little old ladies murdering men for the proceeds of the insurance policies that the ladies have taken out on the men. Sounds like the kind of true crime book that you save to read on a dark and stormy night!
I just couldn't wait to read about the events which transpired in the lives of these women to turn them into to such greedy, heartless people...no such luck. Evidently, the bare minimum of research was done on the people involved in this book.
I agree with the reviewer who said that a great writer needs to rewrite this one.
Not a bad book exactly, it just left me wishing for so much more.

After having an genuine interest in the case and defendants covered within this book by Jeanne King, I bought a copy. Unfortunately, Ms. King does a poor job here.
Too much of the book is devoted to giving the reader details they really don't care to know, such as; the personal lives of the detectives who investigated the case and being repetitious in many places.
This leads me to the conclusion that Ms. King either didn't have access to much of the information about the defendants and tried elaborating on the little details that are trivial, or she wanted to drum up this book as quickly as possible and simply added a lot of filler - perhaps a little of both.

My advice is to skip this one. There is an episode of "American Greed" that covers this case which tells virtually just as much about the case and defendants as this book.

I agree with the other reviews that this book was poorly written. Additionally, my book did contain any photos although there were supposed to be "8 pages of alarming photos" (as indicated on the back cover) inside the book. The only photo in the book was a single photo of the author on the inside of the back cover.