Customer Reviews

There But For the Grace of God: Survivors of the 20th Century's Infamous Serial Killers

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

 

 

I thought this book would offer some fresh information and insights on the serial killers that true crime fans know so well. Instead, the author rehashes the same old stories using trial transcripts and the like, material a lot of us have already read, interspersed with a only few pages of survivor interviews.

The author makes sweeping generalizations about serial killers and law enforcement officers and how his interviewees are feeling. For instance, the author talks about how profilers believe they are infallible. If you've read books by F.B.I. profilers, they stress that the profile is only one tool in a P.D.'s arsenal, and that suspects should not be excluded on the basis of any one factor mentioned in the profile. The F.B.I. does not insist that their profiles are completely accurate because in so doing they open themselves up to liability when they are wrong. Also, I remember the author's interview with a survivor who was accompanied by her father. The father was having a difficult time coping with the fact that his daughter was attacked by a serial killer. Instead of exploring that, really digging into it, the author surmises that it is because the father is upset that he couldn't protect his daughter. Then the author launches into a diatribe about how this country failed this military man, this father of a survivor. How? The killer was brought to justice, and his daughter lived -- I'm just not sure how the author makes that leap in logic, among many others.

The author writes the way Horatio Caine from CSI: Miami would write. You just want to laugh at his over-dramatization of the U.S. highway system and such, how it has aided serial killers in their hunting. Spare us the little history lessons on the Gulf Coast canebrake and a play-by-play of your drives around the country and give us more in-depth interviews.

The author also makes factual errors. One that comes to mind is when the author writes that BTK parked at Dillon's, "a local restaurant" in Kansas. It is actually a grocery store chain. If he can't check his facts on these little things, how can we believe him on the big stuff?

Finally, the author hypothesizes about the reasons why some people survive attacks by serial killers. The author suggests it might be God, implies that it is the fighter instinct, but doesn't go beyond these surface observations. It would be interesting to get a survivor's advice on how to fight off an attacker rather than just guessing why someone lived, as the author does.

All in all, this book draws you in because it seems to offer something new, it is small, and the cover looks exciting, but don't be fooled. It is not worth the purchase.

I have been reading true crime for over ten years, and I don't have very high expectations as the publishing bar for this genre is very low. I have read some very badly written true crime, but this was the worst by far.

The author hardly goes a page without using the term 'serial killer', as if we'd forget what we were reading. As previous reviews stated, the author used cliches non-stop and made frequent references to films completely unrelated to the subject. I was willing to let the poor writing slide, until he actually Judged several of the victims that did not survive BTK. He actually says they could have/should have done something else to survive. In essence, they just gave up and did nothing to help themselves. How dare he!?!? No one can possibly know how they are going to react in life or death circumstances, and sometimes, doing nothing CAN save your life. It just depends on the kind of criminal you are dealing with.

Despite my outrage, I continued reading (once I start, I HAVE to finish, no matter how bad it is, it's a problem), and found several factual errors, particularly in the Bundy chapter.

Overall, the main selling point of this book seemed to be stories of survival. But I learned much more about the author's choice of beverages.

If you are looking for good true crime, look elsewhere (Ann Rule). If you're looking for stories of survival, read "Alive". If you want to read the lamest book ever written, by all means, this is the book for you.

Mr.Rosen does some good things with this book. He highlights the lives of some survivors of serial killers such as Jeffrey Dahmer,Dennis Rader,David Berkowitz and even Richard Speck.
The question of why some survive while others don't is an interesting one. He partially addresses that question.

The writer vents a lot of anger at criminal profilers in the B.T.K. case and the NYPD in general regarding the "Son of Sam" case. I think it's a detriment to the book itself and in some cases he overstates the obvious, like the fact that Richard Speck was a drunk and an idiot,and two Milwaukeee police officers blundered big-time in returning an eventual victim to Dahmer.

I didn't see the relevance of including transcripts of Dahmer's parents court battle over his brain and whether it would be donated to science or cremated. Speaking of cremation,what happened to Richard Speck in prison or to his body after death wasn't relevant to the subject either.

Good subject matter, it's just that the author roamed unto other areas a little too much for my liking.

If you are interested (as I was) in reading about the victims and especially the survivors of serial killers this book will disappoint. The chapter on Jeffery Dahmer has some unnecessarily graphic descriptions of his crimes. The chapters on Nita Neary (survivor of Ted Bundy) and Carl Denaro (one of the survivors of David Berkowitz) are the best in the book. The chapters where Mr. Rosen could not locate the survivors, Tracy Edwards (survivor of Jeffrey Dahmer) and Corazon Amurao (survivor of Richard Speck) are the worst chapters. If you are interested in short histories of serial killers this is a worthwhile book. If you are interested in reading about the survivors you should probably save your money.

A product of my culture, I've been morbidly fascinated by serial killers from a very young age. As chance would have it, Dahmer's last murder attempt happened on my tenth birthday, and I remember reading about it a few years later in a book called The Milwaukee Murders. So when I saw this book on the shelf, my interests were again piqued.

I was hoping for detailed depictions from the survivors. Instead, each chapter (one for each survivor) begins with some local trivia, Rosen setting the scene for his meeting with the survivors, an extremely brief run-down of the serial killer's victims and/or MO and finally a brief description of how the survivor got away. Truth be told, he didn't even meet face-to-face with all the survivors as some of them couldn't be found.

All in all, the actual stories of the survivors are brief and require little more than a few pages each, so each chapter is mostly fluff. The book is written in a very simplistic manner, making it an easy read for anyone, but I was put-off by Rosen's constant judgements and assignments of "the good guys" and "the bad guys" and his application of the word "evil." It made the read feel preachy at times. Perhaps I was hoping for something a little more objective, and for that we can't fault Rosen.

If you're looking for a brief intro to serial killer true crime, this book might be a decent place to start. Otherwise, there's are better choices on the shelf and I highly recommend choosing another.

`There but for the Grace of God Survivors of the 20th century's infamous Serial killers' by Fred Rosen is a book with admirable intentions: it focuses on the survivors of serial killers, arguing that far too much literature is devoted to the perpetrators and that "dumpsites", "kill counts" and that our culture suffers from a fascination with violence and exploitation giving the example of serial killer key chains.
For these reasons the books central moral premise is good, although I question whether a victim centered approach would actually be useful in capturing serial killers. Despite these good points I gave the book only two stars for the following reasons:
The author talks constantly about himself. He seems to see himself as some wonderful counselor to these poor victims and never fails to show himself being sympathetic. I could've probably died happy not knowing that Fred Rosen likes Southern Comfort.
He also pontificates about his political opinions endlessly: I didn't buy the book in order to read about the author's opinions about Hurricane Katrina, and how awful the author thinks racism is. A slight hint to what these opinions are, every time a serial killer is a Republican Fred Rosen never fails to mention it, perhaps this the reason that John Wayne Gacy is not included in this book. He talks about racism far too much for someone dealing with crimes that are sexually motivated rather than racially motivated this is especially true of his chapter on Dahmer, for whilst latent racism may have played a part in the Konerak Sinthasomphone incident on the part of the police. I doubt very much that Jeffrey Dahmer was racist any more than Bundy hated brunettes.
His writing style could also have been drastically improved.

I was very sxicted to read this book. I was sadly very dissapointed that i read it. First numerous spelling errors. Many factual errors as well. The Bundy chapter was an insult. The author did very little in acutally writing any informaion on the survivors, it was more just a quik recap of certain serial killers. He aslo used this as an oppurtunity to bash the police officers on many cases. Funny how he can so easily point out the mistakes after the fact. He makes it seem as if he would have easily figured out things that they couldnt..... again after the fact. He aslo seems to make certain victims out to be people who did things the wrong way, and could have avoided their fate.
The spelling errors are plenty to. At one point he refers to KAKA t.v., wich is wrong. Then later he correctly calls it KAKE t.v.. Written in bold lettering it stood out, and there should be no reason for the spelling error to have not been noticed.
I bought this book hoping to learn about certain people who were lucky to ahve survived their attacker, expecially Nita Neary, and i got nothing. He did very little if any informationa bout them, and instead made it seem like he was doing them the favor of including them in his book at all.
THe author is very arrogant, and seems to be very proud of himself. Sadly he has nothing to be proud of and should instead feel embarassed.

I consider myself to be a bit of a conusor of the true crime genre and I can honestly say that this is, by far, the worst book I have ever read. Mr. Rosen adds so much useless information and cliches in this book that I found myself rolling my eyes at certain points. I don't care what he ordered to drink in Memphis or anywhere else for that matter.
Aside from that issue, I found myself getting furious with Mr. Rosen for his blatent bashing of certain victims. How dare he call these people names! Even if a woman was a prostitute or a stripper, it gives him no right to call them names. These women were all innocent victims and they were all someone's child, daughter, friend, etc. Mr. Rosen, you should be ashamed of yourself.

I, like so many people in the world are very interested in what makes a serial killer tick. I heard Fred Rosen being interviewed by the Broads on XM regarding this book, and it sounded like it would really be great. It's premise being that the survivors of serial killers tell their stories of how they escaped to live another day and what they are doing with their second chances.
Fred featured several of the most well known
serial killers, (Dahmer,Son of Sam, Bundy etc.) and actually told some more facts about these sick people that I had not heard about from other sources. This part was very interesting. However, his style of writing was filled with cliches and was so predictable that I practically knew what I was going to read in the next sentence. He did not write as much about the "thing" that allowed the survivors to outwit their captors as I was hoping for. He breezed over much of the survivors' stories and left me wanting more. His writing style was all wrong for this book and frankly, a little juvenile and I was disappointed in the piece as a whole. If he had done a more psychological profile of the survivors and delved a little deeper into their stories, it would have been a much more satisfying read.

Was this book self-published? If not, the editor should be looking for a different line of work. This is, without any doubt, the most poorly written book I have ever read! I'm not going to repeat what others have said, but I agree with everything the one-star reviewers said. Even the reviewer who didn't know how to spell connoisseur could recognize the problems.

Fred, Kimberly Leach was from Lake City, Florida, not Utah.

And don't accuse me of not reading the damn book. I'm on page 83, and just had to stop to post this review. Sheesh.

Maybe this could become a cult classic.