Practice to Deceive
This is Rule’s twenty-fourth true-crime book in a successful sweep that started with her brilliant take on serial killer Ted Bundy, the man she worked next to at a Seattle crisis center. Rule’s true-crime books are notable for their in-depth forensics, perceptive trial coverage (often), and keen psychological insight (always). Her latest extends an analogy she has often used: how an investigation into homicide takes, basically, a stick drawing of a person, the victim, and with each piece of evidence and parts of interviews, transforms the stick figure into a rounded, complex human being whose life holds the key to his or her death. In 2003, a man’s body was discovered in a car parked in front of a cabin on Whidbey Island, Washington. The victim, Russel Douglas, had a single gunshot wound to his head. The investigation took years to complete (it took a decade to come to trial) and wound through seven states and Mexico. Rule is at her best in tracing Douglas’ frantic, depression-fueled changes in the years preceding his murder. This time Rule occasionally becomes tedious in her detailed coverage of every phase of the investigation and trial, using her remarkable access to sources to deliver, finally, too much information. Still, this account delivers quite a punch in its final revelations. --Connie Fletcher