Type of bind: Mass Market Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 364.1523092
EAN num: 9780451203267
ISBN number: 0451203267
Label: Signet
Manufacturer: Signet
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 560
Printing Date: June 01, 2001
Publishing house: Signet
Release Date: June 12, 2001
Sale Popularity Level: 132757
Studio: Signet
Other books you might be interested in perusing:
Editor's Notes and Comments:
Product Description:
Ann Rule was a writer working on the biggest story of her life, tracking down a brutal mass-murderer. Little did she know that Ted Bundy, her close friend, was the savage slayer she was hunting.
The most fascinating killer in modern American history...Ann Rule has an extraordinary angle that makes The Stranger Beside Me as dramatic and chilling as a bedroom window shattering at midnight. (The New York Times)
Overwhelming. (The Houston Post)
A shattering story...carefully investigated, written with compassion but also with professional objectivity. (Seattle Times)
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 very 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
User popularity level:
Rated by buyers 
-
Ann and Ted were Crisis Hotline buddies. Ann was contracted to write a book about his case on the side without knowing he was the one responsible for the recent string of murders. The angle is amazing and has the effect of humanizing Ted, though there seems to be an impulse in view of future revelations, to cast him as being even more of a monster for the fact that he behaved like one a mere fraction of the time.
Monstrous: The Autobiography of a Serial Killer but for the Grace of God
Rated by buyers -
As I sat reading Ann Rule's riveting book, it occured to me that this piece of crime writing is actually a classic in American literature. Some may not agree. How many people can start to write about grisly murders and find out that a true friend that used to work by her side was the actual killer? This book takes one into the deepest,darkest, sickest recesses of Bundy's mind and lays him out for what he is, a creature that was unstoppable and who really could not stop himself from these horribly gruesome crimes. One even comes, at times, to care for Ted Bundy, and then just in time, realizes that you are caring for a monster, so sick that words can't describe him. I very much like true crime books, but this one is king of all that have been written and Ann Rule is the queen of her genre. Just beware before you read it. You will never be the same.
Rated by buyers -
When you know the ending it is hard to write or read a book without being biased with the knowledge. This book weaves what was known and what was not at any given time so well that in your mind you keep trying to reconcile the two and for those moments you do not want to connect them to the end that is now so well known. The way she introduces Ted in the beginning and the way events unravel, you keep trying to juxtapose the known Ted Bundy and the mysterious and ruthless killer who left a trail of death in his wake, and like her, you simply cannot.
What is also praiseworthy is that the author neither interrupts the flow with personal judgment nor does she glamorize the gore. It was mature and intelligent real-crime storytelling at its best.
There are aspects of the relationship between the author and the main character that wants you to judge not Ted, but herself - did she lead Ted on so she could get a story out of it, all the time backing her actions with moral reasoning? In my opinion that is beyond the scope of this review and the five stars that I think the book deserves.
Rated by buyers -
This may be the best, most insightful biography of a serial killer ever written. Oddly, it was only on my second reading that I realized how short Mr. Bundy's reign of homicidal brutality actually was. From January of 1974 until August of 1975, Mr. Bundy lured, attacked, and murdered young women in Washington State, Oregon, Colorado and Utah. In January of 1978 Mr. Bundy went on his infamous, and rather uncharacteristic, rampage on the campus of Florida State University and, on February 9th of that year, he claimed his last victim. So how many women did Ted Bundy deprive of life? Anne Rule suggests that his very first victim was Ann Marie Burr, vanished August 31, 1961, when Mr. Bundy was 14 years old. She also mentions that she believes he killed Katherine Devine in December of 1973 (see p.435), but DNA tests have since confirmed that her killer was a loser named William Cosden. Mr. Bundy himself admitted to killing 8 young women in Washington State, 5 in Colorado, 5 in Utah, 1 in Oregon, and 3 in Florida. The author also suggests that Bundy was responsible for a murder in Vermont in 1971 (his MO) and perhaps in Pennsylvania in 1969 (not his MO). Mr. Bundy also claimed he killed a hitchhiker near the Washington coast in 1973, but apparently no one ever missed her. Rule also thinks Bundy may have murdered a woman in 1966 and likely dispatched two additional young women in Utah in 1975 and 1976. So, if my math is right, Bundy admitted to killing 23 young women total. The author suspects him of 5 additional murders. And Mr. Bundy himself, despite his being a notorious liar, did hint that he had left some bodies in California as well. So much misery and so much pointless cruelty leaves this reader rather sad and rather shaken.
Rated by buyers -
I am 28 and so was only a young girl when Bundy was executed. I had heard of him, but was not familiar with the extent of his crimes. Working in the forensic field, I am fascinated with the stories of true crime and serial killers. I am an avid reader but sometimes it is hard for me to find non-fiction books that really hold my attention. Not the case with this book. I received this book for my birthday and started it as soon as I finished the book I was reading at the time. I couldn't put it down!
The original book ended before Bundy was executed but there are several follow-ups at the end that really carry the story through to today. Because Rule knew Bundy, she is able to provide much insight and goes above and beyond just the facts.
I highly recommend this book if you are at all interesting in knowing more about one of the most notorious serial killers of all time.
Find other books like this one:
