Customer Reviews

Victim: The Other Side of Murder

5 star:		(22)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

While a Psychology student in 1993, I was required to read this book. Not being one to enjoy reading, I was amazed. I could not put this book down. I stayed up till 4 am to finish with classes the next morning. Very well written. You really feel you know what these people experienced. No detail was left out. So many books read in Psychology classes are from the criminals point of view. This was not.

I read this book when it first came out, in the very early 1980's. I can never forget the pictures this awesome author painted in my mind. They are horrible, and without giving the book away, everysingle time I hear the words "Hi-FI," or see a pencil or a bottle of Drano, I think of this book. Ugh, giving me the chills thinking about it. By the way, I am wondering how the author liked the movie, if at all?

I actually live in Ogden, and this is a very big deal here. Everyone seems to know about it, or actually knows someone who was impacted by these events. This book does show a very, albeit grim, accurate account of what happened, and the afterlife of the crime. Although Cortney's life was horribly changed, he tried to make the best of it, as did his family, and beat the odds!

I read this book when it was first published, about 15 years ago. Not only is it well written, but it thoughtfully and compassionately presents "the other side of the story." It's a book I've replaced in my library at least twice, and I'm thrilled it's being re-released. A real page-turner.

I first read this book in the early 80's. It was so horrific, I could not pick it up again until recently. Very well written and gripping. It is not often that one reads the story from the victims viewpoint and the far reaching consequences of a very senseless act of violence. I only wish there had been some pictures of the victims when they were alive. Their story will forever pull at my heart. May they rest in peace.

I am from ogden, utah where the murderes took place and i have never heard anything this inhuman in my life. Three outraged men going in to a store called the HI-FI shops in downtown ogden and taking the lives of 6 people. This is a disgrace. The book was well written and well worded i enjoyed reading this book. I hope other people get a chance to read it. As i thought before i started reading it couldntn be that bad by the end of the book you will have a tear in your eye guarantee. Very good book by gary kinder

Most true crime books feature the life and times of the killer(s), with the victim portrayed as the unfortunate corpse in the first chapters. This book puts a human face on the victims.

Courtney's struggle and bravery are heartbreaking and inspiring. This book shows how a moment of senselss violence, which is usually given a brief amount of news coverage, actually has a ripple effect that lasts a lifetime. A must-read.

"Victim" is a masterpiece of the true crime genre, for it was the first book to ever describe in painstaking and intimate detail the enormous physical, psychological, and financial traumas that are enforced upon the survivors of violent crime, and it exposed, also for the first time, how these survivors are often victimised again by an uncaring justice system where the rights of the accused always seem to come before the rights of the victimised.

Gary Kinder is definitely a practitioner of the old saying "don't tell them, show them." A former prosecutor, Kinder tries his hand at writing a true crime book about a boy with his whole life ahead of him who blunders into a horrific store heist, is seriously disfigured and left for dead by the robbers. His mother comes looking for him and is similarly tortured (in her case, fatally). Kinder reconstructs the ordeal of the victim (hence the title) almost minute by minute. He then takes you through the police investigation and trial of the criminals. But all the while, he keeps the spotlight on the victim, which sets this apart from most true crime books. He never editorializes or preaches. He lays out the facts in a clear yet compelling prose style and he lets them speak for themselves. Kinder teaches a Continuing Legal Education course on legal brief writing (I'd love to be a fly on that wall). And if you think this is a good book, you will also want to read his "Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea."

I'm a true crime buff and have read countless books that detailed grisly crimes. None have affected me as much as Victim. Kinder's vivid description of the horror that went on in the Hi-Fi Shop was cringe-inducing enough, but the aftermath of the crime was almost unbearably difficult to read. When it comes to most crimes, we read the initial news coverage, we read or hear about the trial (if the perps are caught), and that's it. Thanks to Kinder, I now always wonder about those that have to go on living after the final gavel bangs in the courtroom. Is there any such thing as "closure" for someone whose esophagus is so scarred from drinking Drano that he can't swallow? For someone who saw his son killed in front of his eyes? For those death penalty apologists who pity the perps, keep in mind that the barbarians who committed this crime had three square meals per day and no difficulty in swallowing them until the date of their execution.