Irresistible Impulse: A True Story of Blood and Money
by By Lindsey, Robert
Category: Social Science , General

From Robert Lindsey, best-selling author of The Falcon and the Snowman and The Flight of the Falcon, comes a riveting true story of money, madness, and murder.To Monika Zumsteg, a modest California beauty, it seemed like a fairy tale come true. The quiet, handsome Englishman who rode in on a gleaming motorcycle, who swept her off her feet, and who politely asked her father for her hand in marriage, turned out to be one of the richest men in the world. He is an heir to the billion-dollar fortune of the Vesteys, Britain's second-wealthiest family after the royals.At first, her life in England is idyllic. The newlyweds settle into a sprawling manor house in the countryside. The Vestey Trust picks up all the expenses. Monika learns to ride and hunt foxes, dabbles in Victorian antiques, and even applies to Oxford. She is thrown into a world of wealth and aristocracy beyond her imagination. But what began as a storybook romance soon becomes an unstoppable horror.Her husband, Michael Telling, is sly, deceitful, and wildly erratic. She makes excuses for his lies and his disappearances. In fits of jealousy, he rips apart their home and threatens Monika with knives and guns. A diabetic, he sends himself into insulin shock in a desperate plea to keep her from leaving. Monika discovers that Michael spent much of his privileged childhood in a psychiatric hospital, and she can't resist trying to help him. Besides, his aristocratic family tells the bride from California they are counting on her.Monika's efforts and Michael's promises give the couple a chance to put their marriage back on track. But no matter how hard she tries, Monika never knows what to expect. As the terror in her life increases, she turns to alcohol. Monika and Michael are on a fatal collision course that neither seems able to escape.Irresistible Impulse is a vivid, Hitchcockian account of what became one of England's most celebrated and disturbing criminal cases. It is a complex and complete psychological study, a bone-chilling drama that only Robert Lindsey could write.