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The Stranger Beside Me Mass Market Paperback – December 30, 2008

by Ann Rule (Author)

985 customer reviews

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THE DEFINITIVE WORK OF AMERICAN TRUE CRIME FROM "AMERICA'S BEST TRUE-CRIME WRITER" (Kirkus Reviews)

Utterly unique in its astonishing intimacy, as jarringly frightening as when it first appeared, Ann Rule's The Stranger Beside Me defies our expectation that we would surely know if a monster lived among us, worked alongside of us, appeared as one of us. With a slow chill that intensifies with each heart-pounding page, Rule describes her dawning awareness that Ted Bundy, her sensitive coworker on a crisis hotline, was one of the most prolific serial killers in America. He would confess to killing at least thirty-six young women from coast to coast, and was eventually executed for three of those cases. Drawing from their correspondence that endured until shortly before Bundy's death, and striking a seamless balance between her deeply personal perspective and her role as a crime reporter on the hunt for a savage serial killer -- the brilliant and charismatic Bundy, the man she thought she knew -- Rule changed the course of true-crime literature with this unforgettable chronicle.

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Not long ago, true crime writer Ann Rule recalls lying on an operating table. The anesthesiologist leaned over before putting her to sleep. "Ann," the anesthesiologist said softly, "tell me, what was Ted Bundy really like?" Despite meeting Florida's electric chair in 1989, the subject of Rule's bestselling book continues to haunt her. Rule and Bundy were friends. They met in 1971 at a Seattle crisis clinic, where they shared the late shift answering a suicide hotline. Their subsequent conversations, meetings, and letters spanned the rest of Bundy's life as he evolved into one of the century's most notorious serial killers. It's been 20 years since Rule first penned this chilling account. But the story--and her 2000 update--will still have readers reaching for their Xanax. No gratuitous gore here; just the basic, bone-chilling evidence. In fact, like a protective mother shielding us from horrors too awful to mention, Rule seems to avoid delving too deeply into crime scene descriptions. She devotes one paragraph in her new afterword to her discovery that Bundy engaged in necrophilia and returned to the scenes of his crimes to "line dead lips and eyes with garish makeup and to put blush on pale cheeks." She tells readers that John Hinckley, who shot Ronald Reagan, and David Berkowitz, the Son of Sam Killer, traded prison correspondences with Bundy. And she hints that Bundy's insatiable killer instincts may have started when he was a 14-year-old paperboy. (Ann Marie Burr, an 8-year-old girl on his route, mysteriously disappeared in the middle of the night and has never been found.) The skimpy update is over too soon, leaving readers wanting more and offering further proof of the public's never-ending fascination with serial killers. --Jodi Mailander Farrell --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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"As dramatic and chilling as a bedroom window shattering at midnight." -- The New York Times

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Product details

Mass Market Paperback: 672 pages
Publisher: Pocket Books; Updated ed. edition (December 30, 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1416559590
ISBN-13: 978-1416559597
Product Dimensions: 4.2 x 1.3 x 6.8 inches
Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 985 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,295 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #12 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > True Crime > Serial Killers
- #15 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Specific Groups > Crime & Criminals
- #18 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > True Crime > Murder & Mayhem

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EXCELLENT AUTHOR OF TRUE CRIME

ByLUV70on January 25, 2017

Format: Mass Market PaperbackVerified Purchase

Excellent true-story about how the author actually worked right beside Ted Bundy at a Crisis Ctr in WA. She had a dificult time believing he had another side to his personality. She is really good in describing the women he murdered and how he did it. She is an excellent True Story crime author. This book has been updated to her previous one and she has had many women contact her w/close encounters w/Ted Bundy who were able to get away from him and not be one of his victims.

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An Excellent Read!

ByAmazon Customeron December 10, 2016

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

I came across this wonderfully compelling and dramatic book by chance--and I'm glad I did! I remember hearing the stories about Ted Bundy and even recall when he was finally executed in late 1989. However, as with most people, I never knew the real story...the one that puts all the pieces together and reveals the secrets behind this tragic series of events.

I highly recommend this book. It is perhaps more relevant today than it was when first published years ago. The author (and lastly her daughter) add updates and postscripts that bring everything full circle many years after Ted Bundy died a much deserved death in Florida's electric chair.

No one will ever know the full depth of Bundy's depravity but this book gives us a clear and concise understanding behind a true "real life monster".

0Comment 2 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you?YesNo

Not written in chronological order, which annoyed me.

Bymom of toddleron July 20, 2014

Format: Mass Market PaperbackVerified Purchase

I enjoyed this book and would recommend. This author had a different perspective that most true crime writers don't have, which made this book very unique. However, I became annoyed with all the skipping around and not being written in chronological order. I also agree with other reviewers that Ann was an enabler and fooled like the rest of Ted's women. I feel there was too much detail on Ann's feelings of Ted and lacked crime scene details. I also wanted more information about Teds victims and the reason behind the killings. I would read like to read another one of her books before making my opinion on this author.

11 comment 4 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you?YesNo

Women, and those who love them, will not rest easy after this volume

ByWill Whitmanon December 13, 2013

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

I wouldn't bother with a "pulp" crime writer like A. Rule, but a forensic phycologist recommended her to me.

A concerned mother and grandmother, Ms. Rule takes her deep obligations as woman, and as Bundy's friend with fitting judiciousness. That to this day she is constantly pummeled by women the world over in "love" with this "Stranger Beside" her is breathtaking. A great strength is her jargon-free "no nonsense" tack: Ann is Salt-of-the-Earth, refreshing.

One can't imagine a more odious, unfailingly narcissistic, and manipulative man than Bundy whose every relationship was founded upon pure manipulation.

She believes Ted sane, to have had a "personalty disorder", and only at the end of the text (last up-dated by her in 2000) does she briefly mention Bundy's thanatophillia. "His reasoning was simplistic. What Ted wanted, Ted should have." "Bundy was a liar." she writes. Still, she maintains compassion.

Also at the end, agitation during Bundy's early life is revealed in the home of a "Patriarchal breadwinner, the kind of man a family runs from when he returns." This was the grandfather who shred his wife to tatters - the one man Bundy loved unconditionally.

Ted was a true killing machine - think of one worse than a Law major and student of Psychology? A man with immense properties of renewal who confessed to his crimes only at the eleventh hour, and only as a play to extend his own life…

Women, and those who love them will not rest easy after this volume. There are, however, pointers in how to save ourselves. God have mercy that there are others like him somewhere. Terror pure and simple.

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This is by far the best book ever written about Ted Bundy

ByAlison Summerson October 25, 2015

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

This is by far the best book ever written about Ted Bundy. I don't just mean about his crimes I mean about his character. It was written through the eyes of a woman who was his close friend, a former police woman, who worked the phones with him at the Seattle Crisis Center. Ann Rule had studied abnormal psychology, yet she was completely fooled into thinking that Bundy was a kind, sensitive and sincere man who respected women. This book chronicles her steadfast loyalty to him before and after his arrest—when she couldn't believe 100% in his guilt, but confusingly couldn't believe 100% in his innocence, too—through to her realization that the Ted Bundy she knew had never existed. It's an excellent book for those who have been in relationships with sociopaths, and who are still trying to figure out what was true and what was a lie. The silver lining is that after her book about Ted Bundy was published, Ann Rule's writing career took off. She became the most popular true crime writer in the U.S.A. But she never forgot the victims. Her writing was always fueled by a commitment to honoring them.

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Excellent book

ByMary Hon August 8, 2017

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

It's true crime and memoir and a first-hand look at a sociopath as he lives his version of a normal life. Ann Rule is empathetic to Bundy, his victims, families and people who thought they knew him. The book flows, and always kept my interest.

She gives lots of facts, all in the context of Bundy and others living their normal lives. Which makes the murders that much more shocking. There's a good reason this is considered a genuine true crime classic. I recommend it to true crime readers, people in the Northwest, and anyone that just wants a great read.

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A standard in true crime for a reason.

ByCliff W Kingon October 6, 2016

Format: Mass Market PaperbackVerified Purchase

Ann Rule provides a comprehensive and sometimes rather intimate experience of profiling Ted Bundy and giving an account of his crimes and capture. . . well . . . captures. Rule is a master and pioneer of the craft of true crime and this makes you feel all the complex feelings she must have felt with her unique connection to the murderer and criminal. A must-read for any fan of the genre.

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.....wow

ByAmazon Customeron August 18, 2016

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

It was a rollercoasters of emotions. I was angry at Ann for giving him the benefit of doubt in the start, and it even crossed my mind that she had feelings for him. I was sad for Ted bc I don't believe anything could have cured him. I even cried towards the end bc it was all over and I couldn't imagines what he felt during his last moments, what his victims felt knowing they will never see their loved ones again.

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Most recent customer reviews

Very Interesting!

Great read and very insightful information on Ted Bundy. Anne Rule does a superb job of keeping the reader engaged. A must read for all crime book lovers.

Published 15 minutes ago by Kindle Customer

Interesting!

Ann Rule is such a great author! She can definitely hold my attention and makes it hard to put her books down! This one is no different!Read more

Published 4 days ago by Ashley

Read this

So good. Factual and creepy. Very well written. Every murderino should read it.

Published 7 days ago by gone with the wind fabulous

Five Stars

Upclose and personal look into Ted Bundy

Published 8 days ago by Chicmom

Interesting and hard to read.

I have to admit the subject matter was sickening at times and it's hard to see how she never had any suspicion about him but it was very well written.

Published 8 days ago by R. Bryant

Best book Ive read in a long while

Crisp and fascinating. Can't wait to read more of Ann Rule. She got me hooked! Also, thanks to My Favourite Murder podcast for referring this!

Published 11 days ago by Kindle Customer

The Stranger Beside ME

An interesting read, but the author spends way too much time patting herself on the back and appears to exaggerate her actual relationship with Bundy.Read more

Published 11 days ago by Amazon Customer

Interesting insight.

Overall good look at the Bundy case from a true insider. Definitely worth re reading if you read previous editions prior to updates.

Published 11 days ago by Kindle Customer

Too much ann

Needed more about Ted's crimes A lot was missing!! I found myself skipping pages to get to more interesting detail.

Published 17 days ago by carol f.

A great read! Highly recommend it

A great read! Highly recommend it.

Published 18 days ago by Jan

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