But I Trusted You

I love Ann Rule, I really do.  I want to hang with her.  I went through a stage in high school where I read a lot of true crime, but the glorified violence and gore bothered me after awhile.  But Ann Rule is, at heart, an advocate for victims, and her books do their best to save lives.

But I Trusted You by Ann Rule is collection of true crime stories for which Ann has become famous for.  Although she's most famous for having been a friend of Ted.  Not cute funny Ted from How I Met Your Mother, but rather serial killing Ted Bundy.  They actually worked together on a suicide hotline.  Rule had already written several true crime books when her friend Ted was first suspected of being the serial killer hunting co-eds in Washington and Oregon.  She had already been asked to start research on the book in anticipation of a killer being caught.  How's that for irony?

Like her other true crime file books, But I Trusted You starts off with one long story, and then contains several shorter stories.  Most take place in Washington state because that's where Ann lives and writes, and they're cases that she has previously covered or researched.  What I like most about Rule is her attention to detail, she digs into the past of both victim and killer, and shows how they got to point that their life has turned into a true crime case file.  She is a bit soft on the victims at times, but like I said before, she's an advocate of them (by soft I mean that they are almost always described as pretty or handsome, kind of like being airbrushed for a cover of a magazine).  From reading her website forum, I know that she has helped some women realize that they needed to get out of a dangerous relationship.

The title story of the book, But I Trusted You, features a woman as the culprit.  For some reason there are people out there too lazy to divorce a spouse but more than willing to kill them.  Of course this makes them stupid and prone to getting caught.  Although Ann Rule writes mainly about men who kill, simply because men kill more often, she's also told the stories of women like Diane Downs (Small Sacrifices) and Liysa Northon (Heart Full of Lies).  If you like true crime that doesn't focus on the violence, than Ann Rule is the perfect writer for you.  If you like true crime and you haven't read her book on Ted Bundy, The Stranger Beside Me, you need to.

But I Trusted You gets a Midnight Book Rating of 11pm.