Charlie and Me, by Mary Neiswender, Kate Neiswender

Posted on December 15, 2025 by seattlebookmama

Mary Neiswender was the first and primary journalist that the notorious serial killer Charles Manson was willing to talk to. She did so at a time in history in which women in journalism were exceedingly rare, and she put up with a whole lot of crap, first in order to remain in her field, and then later to rise to its pinnacle, receiving a Pulitzer nomination.

My thanks go to the University of Nebraska press and NetGalley. This book is for sale now.

Charles Manson was the leader of a group that called itself “The Family,” almost entirely made up of girls and young women that had nowhere else to go. However, people came and went within it, and so those that spoke of it as a cohesive entity were mistaken. Manson was handsome and charismatic despite his small physical form, and he was convicted of the 1969 Tate-LaBianca murders even though he was almost certainly not present at the time.

Neiswender regarded him as a killer, but also was convinced that he hadn’t had a fair trial. She makes a good case. She delayed writing this book until Manson’s death in prison in 2017, as she had promised to keep much of what he said off the record. Once he died, she considered herself to be freed from that agreement. Neiswender died in March of this year, and her daughter has assisted her in seeing that the book was completed and published.

I don’t read a lot of true crime, but I couldn’t put this book down. Neiswender’s observations and insights are fascinating, and she does a fine job of bringing Manson to life—in a way that the public can appreciate without the physical threat the man represented in person.

Highly recommended.

You’ll Never Believe Me, by Kari Ferrell-*

Posted on January 2, 2025 by seattlebookmama

My thanks go to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for the invitation to read and review. This book will be available to the public January 7, 2025.

The blurb for this book had me at hello. Korean baby girl adopted by Caucasian Americans, who then become Mormons; a childhood and adolescence rife with alienation, discrimination, and ultimately a life of crime; prison time, followed by social crusades, among them prison reform, which is hugely necessary. I was all in, but that was before I read this thing. My own daughter is half Japanese and has to listen to “Where you from?” a fair amount, so this is a sensitive area for me, too. Racial teachings within the LDS (Mormon) church are a veritable minefield, and indeed, I can see how Ferrell’s upbringing would have been fraught.

And yet, the memoir that I read was not what I expected. The memoir, the blurb said, would be laugh out loud funny; I chucked a few times at the outset, and then was mostly just horrified. I received both the digital and audio galleys, and halfway through I abandoned the audio, because Ferrell, who provides her own narration, sounds so ebullient, so proud of herself, that I couldn’t take it. Reverting to the digital made it doable, but I found myself finishing it from a sense of obligation rather than a desire to read more.

Ferrell’s friends during her adolescence are what most adults would consider to be the wrong crowd. Truancy, petty theft, lying, drinking, and drugs are hallmarks. But Ferrell neither stays there as an adult, nor reforms herself once she reaches adulthood, though her parents, even though they divorce, likely can provide her with psychiatric treatment or counseling. Instead, she escalates, and commences stealing and defrauding her friends, pretending to need an abortion, pretending to have cancer, receiving so-called loans and gifts from those that don’t have a lot of money but love her dearly, and then disappearing. Steal in Utah, move to New York City. Steal in New York, go home to the folks in Arizona. And it continues until, at long last, she is arrested, tried, and convicted.

I tried to put my finger on what it is that makes me edgy here. Why do I not believe she’s all that sorry? Partly, it’s that other people appear only briefly and vaguely here. Of course it’s Ferrell’s life that’s the focus, but I would have expected some passages that flesh out the people that have loved her and tried to help her, even if it is necessary to conceal their identities as a matter of their own preferences. What happens to them later? What hardships, if any, do they suffer because of her actions? Instead, all of them come across as shadows, and as if they don’t really matter. I would have expected some emotion around reconnecting with some of these people, trying to make amends and financial restitution, even if they don’t want to see or hear from her. She talks a fair amount about the realization that her behavior is a form of self-sabotage, cutting herself off from positive relationships, but she doesn’t talk much about how she has sabotaged, or even completely blown up, the lives of others.

Lastly, I’m disturbed by some of her assumptions. The one that comes immediately to mind is when she reminds us—as if this is well known—that lying is fun. What??

In order for a memoir to be successful, the reader must be able to bond with the author. I have been unable to do that, either because Ferrell enjoys talking about her crimes and betrayals a little too much, or because she is unable to convey remorse in her writing; either way, I cannot recommend it to you.

Guilty Creatures, by Mikita Brottman*****

Posted on July 28, 2024 by seattlebookmama

Tallahassee, Florida is a city with more than its share of horrifying murders, which Brottman tells us has earned it the nickname, “Tallanasty.” Is it something in the water? No, wait. That’s the gators. One thing that we know is true: in the far right, conservative Christian enclave there, two upstanding young people decided to forego the disgrace and humiliation of divorce by committing the perfect murder. One of their spouses would have an accident while out duck hunting, and he would never be heard from again.

My thanks go to NetGalley and Atria Books for the review copy. This book is for sale now.

The four of them met when they were just kids, and while attending a private Christian high school, they developed a tight bond. Mike and Denise, Brian and Kathy were constantly in one another’s company, and they stayed tight after graduation. The two couples married, and then they cut loose, the four of them partying and engaging in edgy sexual practices that could make an old lady school teacher like me blush. Mike, a hardworking young man from the working class, and Kathy, who wanted to start a family, were ready to settle down and behave themselves; Mike’s wife, Denise, and Kathy’s husband, Brian, were not. In a heartbeat they began carrying out an affair, making elaborate arrangements to avoid shame within their families, church, and community. Ultimately, they decided that Mike, who was a stickler for a structured life and extreme attention to even the smallest financial expenditures, simply had to go. They devised a plan to disappear him, and although suspicions were raised, they got away with the crime for nearly twenty years, when they turned on each other and all hell broke loose.

I had never heard of the case before reading this book, though the author tells us that it has received extensive media coverage. Brottman does a fine job of relaying the story, with perfect pacing and just enough attention to detail. There’s extensive documentation in the end notes, and she relies primarily on primary sources. It reads almost like narrative nonfiction, with suspense building to where I couldn’t look away during the last 25% of the story. This is especially impressive given that I can usually walk away from murder mysteries and thrillers at any time.

I seldom read true crime, and when I finished reading this book, I recalled why that’s so. While I was reading it, it was a fine, trashy wallow, steeping myself in the misdeeds of people that live lives very different from my own. It’s riveting stuff. But once I was done, I felt as though I should take a shower and perhaps gargle.

A little of this type of story goes a long way, but for those that love true crime, it’s a hard one to beat. Highly recommended for those that enjoy the genre.

Gator Country, by Rebecca Renner*-**

Posted on December 6, 2023 by seattlebookmama

3.5 stars, rounded upward.

Rebecca Renner is a journalist who has written for National Geographic and a host of other prestigious newspapers and magazines. Gator Country is her first book. Lucky me, I read it free and early. My thanks go to Macmillan Audio and Net Galley for the review copy. This book is for sale now.

Gator Country is the true story of wildlife officer Jeff Babouta and the sting that brought in a number of poachers and slowed the ravaging of the alligator population in the Florida Everglades. Babouta is coasting toward retirement when he is approached, and although he is reluctant, he is eventually convinced that he is the best qualified officer to carry out this assignment. To do it, he has to live away from his family for years, posing as a newbie gator farmer. This is a legal profession, but it’s also one that is rife with poachers. In order to bring the poachers in, he must first convince them to mentor him and befriend him in his farming operation. He spends years gaining their trust and learning from them, but then has to turn them in.

I thought hard about whether to read this book, because generally speaking, I don’t have warm feelings toward cops, and the past ten years have intensified that sentiment. But rangers and other wildlife cops are a bit more ambiguous; some of them do more good than harm. So it is with Babouta.

There are, Renner tells us, basically two types of poachers. Some are the small, independent people that she says are just trying to feed their families, and some are the large scale despoilers, those working on a large scale to provide gator parts to buyers from China, where they are prized for their medicinal properties and folk cures. Renner is sympathetic toward the former but not the latter.

In following Babouta’s story I pick up odd bits of knowledge. I have never been to the Everglades, nor do I plan to, and so had I not read this book, I would probably never have known that there are bottlenose dolphins there. Who knew? There are a number of such tidbits that I pick up along the way, and this is one of the best things about reading—or listening to—nonfiction.

That said, the audio becomes a complicated read for two reasons. One is that the narrative skips around a great deal. The main part is Babouta’s, but we also hear about Peg Brown, a legendary poacher whose name keeps coming up as Babouta converses with his new colleagues. I have no idea why I or any reader needs to know so much about the guy; from where I sit, Brown hasn’t earned his place in this book, but then it’s not my book. The story is needlessly complicated by Brown as well as a handful of other bits that are woven into the narrative, such as the journalist following along, and we would be better off without these.

The other issue with the audio is that when we shift the point of view, the person whose story we’re hearing has exactly the same voice as Babouta. Now and then I would have to pause and run it back, just to figure out who we’re talking about, or hearing from.

Even though the synopsis makes it crystal clear that the book is about wildlife poaching, rather than an alligator version of Jaws, I expected to hear of some close calls, some scary moments. But the scary moments are mostly about humans.

At the beginning, this book was such a snooze that in order to force myself to keep listening, I found other things to do with my hands. About a third of the way in, however, the story woke up, and after that I was mostly interested, apart from the occasional divergence of topic and point of view. For those that are sufficiently interested to want to read this book, I recommend that you either stick to the print version, or if you strongly favor the audio, get the print version to help you stay oriented and follow along. I would also try to get it free or cheap, unless you have an endless amount of cash to burn.

The White House Plumbers, by Egil “Bud” Krogh and Matthew Krogh

Posted on January 27, 2023 by seattlebookmama

Egil “Bud” Krogh was one of the men known as the “White House Plumbers,” which was a small group of operatives that dressed as tradesmen in order to illegally break into and ransack private offices for the purpose of digging up dirt on political opponents. Krogh’s job, together with E. Howard Hunt, was to lead a small team of men to burglarize the office of Dr. Fielding, the psychiatrist that treated journalist Daniel Ellsberg, in search of a way to discredit Ellsberg, whom President Richard Nixon regarded as an opponent.

My thanks go to Net Galley, St. Martin’s Press, and Macmillan Audio for the review copy and audio book. This book is for sale now.

Few people shy of the Boomer generation will have personal recollection of the Watergate scandal that brought down a sitting U.S. president for the first time, and the burglary of Fielding’s office was the first illegal event that set it all in motion. Nixon was furious that the Pentagon Papers had been released and that the U.S. Supreme Court had come down on the side of the First Amendment and the free press. Consequently, the president decided that the executive branch must go it alone, and sought a way to discredit the journalists behind it. That was how all of this came about. He howled about national security, and may or may not have believed it; or, he may have sought to cover up lies he had told to the American people about the war in Indochina, and since he couldn’t force the publication out of circulation, the next best thing would be to persuade the public that its authors—or annotators, at any rate—were crazy and not to be believed. This background information comes from me, not from the book.

At any rate, this political memoir comes to us courtesy of Bud Krogh, and also his son Matthew, who completed it after Bud’s death. For the purpose of this review, I will use the name Krogh to refer to Bud, unless otherwise noted.

Krogh was brought into this mess by John Ehrlichman, one of the two advisors that were nearly as close as a second skin to Nixon during his time in office. Other accounts refer to both as cold-blooded thugs, and my earlier reading leads me to agree with them, but to Bud, Ehrlichman was a noble soul dedicated to his country and his president, a fine, devout individual that was like a second father to him growing up. It didn’t occur to him, initially at least, that anything he was being asked to do was corrupt or scandalous; here, I find myself shifting in my seat. Surely he must have wondered why this secret little group of men, not even government employees, were being tasked with this job, rather than the agencies that ordinarily do the cloak-and-dagger jobs? He claims that Nixon couldn’t trust FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, who was a slimy character, and that makes at least a little sense to anyone familiar with him. Yikes.

The writing as well as the accountability are uneven throughout this book. The prologue sounds sketchy to me. Those of us that have spent any time at all watching criminal trials take place is familiar with the vaguely nebulous language I see and hear at the beginning of this thing. Instead of saying that he has done something very wrong and is sorry, he says he has made bad choices, and he is sorry about “what happened.” This is the language that guilty people use when their attorney has told them to show remorse. Someone not listening carefully might think that the speaker has apologized, but they’ve actually distanced themselves from wrongdoing. During this portion of the memoir, I glanced at the text and also the device playing the audio, half expecting to see a little slime leaching from its margins.

And yet, at the end, the prose is more eloquent, and the accountability rock solid. Krogh goes to the psychiatrist in order to apologize in person, once he is out of prison. He visits Nixon to apologize to him (which baffles me, but okay.) He claims to have declined a presidential pardon. He never loses an opportunity to put on a hair shirt prior to his many speaking engagements. And so it goes.

One could surmise that the early portion was written by Krogh, and the end written by his son, but even if that is true, those speaking engagements were taken by Bud, not by Matthew, and likewise the specific apologies rendered. So who knows?

The narrator for the audiobook is Peter Krogh, who does a fine job.

If you are interested in studying the Watergate scandal and haven’t read any other books about it, this is not the one. Krogh’s involvement ended with the break-in to Fielding’s office, and he helped cover it up, lying under oath as he was told to do, but he had nothing to do with the Watergate Hotel burglary of the Democratic National Committee’s offices. In short, though famous enough to be remembered for his actions, he was not a central player. For those interested in reading just one book about this scandal, I’d go with All the President’s Men, by Woodward and Bernstein; The Nixon Defense, by John Dean; or Nixon: The Life, by John A Farrell. These are all fairly lengthy; if you are looking for something less lengthy, try One Man Against the World, by Tim Weiner.

As a general read for the uninitiated, I’d give this book 2.5 stars. For Nixon and Watergate buffs, I rate it 3.5 stars.

Marked for Life, by Isaac Wright, Jr. *****

Posted on December 22, 2022 by seattlebookmama

Marked for Life is the legal memoir of Isaac Wright, Junior, and it is a compelling story. At age 28, Wright was framed as a “drug kingpin,” though he had never used or sold drugs, and when he rejected the plea deal offered him, he was convicted and sentenced to life plus seventy years. Through his own efforts, he was able to prove his own innocence and regain his freedom. This book is for sale now, and you should get it and read it.

My thanks go to Net Galley and Macmillan Audio for the review copy. Listening to the recorded version is all the more powerful, because the author reads it himself. Readers should know that this book starts out painfully harsh, with the blow-by-blow events of the day he is arrested, and his subsequent treatment. There’s not a tremendous amount of physical violence, but the emotional toll could just about bring me to my knees; imagine how it must have been for Wright, who lived through it! I begin to fear that I will dread listening to it, and so I promise myself that this will be my car book; I will listen to it while I am driving around, and when I get home, I will turn it off. However, only the beginning is harsh, and once I am twenty percent of the way into it, it becomes so interesting that I quickly change my mind, and it joins me in the kitchen. So reader, don’t be afraid of this book. The rough part is all in the first few chapters.

Wright is targeted by corrupt local officials, who are under the misapprehension that he has a small fortune socked away in the safe in his bedroom. In fact, Wright is a successful businessman; he starts as a music producer, then moves into management, touring with Run DMC, and indeed, he and his family live well. Although he doesn’t say as much, part of me wonders if that is his crime, in the eyes of the local cops and courts: he’s a Black man with money. As soon as he is arrested, the shakedown begins. Give us the money, Wright, and we’ll make it all go away.

He doesn’t, and they don’t.

The most fascinating part of this is learning how a prisoner is able to study the law and represent himself. Obviously, not everyone is as literate and intelligent as Wright is; he makes himself indispensable to other prisoners by assisting them with their own cases also. His ability to juggle a lot of moving parts—his own appeal, his fellow inmates’ cases, and the rigors and restrictions of the prison system, along with the endless pressure on him from those that framed him—is impressive. A lot of his success lies in his perception of what other people want. What does the warden want? What do his fellow prisoners want and need? If this had been me, I don’t think it would have gone well. I’d have been good with the research and the paperwork, but I doubt I could have read the wishes and intentions of those around me as successfully as Wright has done. Ultimately, it is an inspirational story, and I highly recommend it to you.

Scorpions Dance, by Jefferson Morley****

Posted on August 24, 2022 by seattlebookmama

The Watergate burglary’s fiftieth anniversary has passed, and Jefferson Morley, a longtime journalist and political biographer, has written a history of that event; the focus is Richard Helms, the man that ran the CIA and had to walk a tightrope between the demands of President Richard Nixon, and what best served the CIA. This book is for sale now.

If you are searching for just one book to read about the Watergate debacle and/or Nixon, this isn’t it. However, if you are a hardcore Nixon buff, as I am, or if you are a researcher, looking for specific information for academic study, you can hardly do better.

My thanks go to Net Galley and St. Martin’s Press for the invitation to read and review.

Helms was a slick operator, walking a tightrope as he sought to protect the reputation of the agency while maintaining cordial relations with Nixon and those around him. For some of this, there’s a heavy irony involved here; how can anybody ever make the CIA look less than sleazy? But of course, leftists like me are not the ones Helms wanted to impress in the first place.

As the administration sought to damage political enemies that might prevent Nixon’s reelection for a second term, its shady dealings—hiring thugs to ransack a psychiatrist’s office in search for dirt on an opponent, and planting bugs in the office of the Democratic Party in the Watergate Hotel—proved to be the president’s undoing.

Two of the ugly characters in service to Nixon were in charge, for example, of interviewing candidates for a “riot squad” of counterdemonstrators to oppose the anticipated throngs of antiwar demonstrators that were anticipated in Washington. “One of them was Frank Sturgis, whose reputation for violence preceded him. ‘The men were exactly what I was looking for,’ Liddy rumbled in Will, his best-selling memoir. ‘Tough, experienced and loyal. Hunt and I interviewed about a dozen men. Afterward Howard told me that between them they had killed twenty-two men, including two hanged from a beam in the garage.’”

The burglaries had too many moving parts to be kept completely under wraps, and consequently, the president and his top advisors were soon looking for scapegoats below themselves, men that could be packed off to prison while the country regained confidence in the administration that had supposedly brought them to justice. At one point, they had Helms in their sights as a possible fall guy, and the former CIA director, McCord, who was retired, caught wind of this and was having none of it. In a letter, he said, “If Helms goes and the Watergate operation is laid at the feet of the CIA where it does not belong, every tree in the forest will fall. It will be a scorched desert. The whole matter is at the precipice now.”

There are moments when I wonder if the ghost of Richard Nixon haunts the White House, cackling with glee to see a former president in far more trouble today than he himself experienced when he was there. Who knows what the old dog would have thought about the political machinations unfurling today?

Morley has a conversational narrative tone that works wonders. Because I had fallen behind, I checked out the audio version from Seattle Bibliocommons, and narrator John Pruden does a fine job bringing it to life. But the most impressive aspect of this book is the research behind it, with treasure troves of primary documents and brilliant integration of data from multitudinous places. The endnotes are impeccable, enabling other researchers to trace back the facts to their original sources if they need or desire it.

For a niche readership of researchers, this is a five star work, but I suspect most interested parties will be of a more widespread readership; for them, this is still a fine read at four stars. Most satisfying.

Inspector Oldfield and the Black Hand Society, by William Oldfield and Victoria Bruce***

Posted on October 2, 2018 by seattlebookmama

InspectorOldfieldandtheB I received a review copy free and early, thanks to Net Galley and Simon and Schuster/Touchtone. This book is for sale now.

Who knew that the U.S. Postmaster has the authority to commander an entire ship or airline in pursuit of justice? Needless to say, it doesn’t happen often; think of the press if that were to happen today! But Inspector Frank Oldfield was a man on a mission.

Once the introduction is over, I find an uneven quality to the narrative. The aspect that describes the gangsters and the formation of the Black Hand is fascinating; after the buildup, however, I find the inspector himself less riveting and the writing not as tight as I’d prefer. The research is a little spotty and the sources are not well integrated.

However, if true crime is your wheelhouse, you may want to get a copy of this one-of-a-kind biography.

To Kill and Kill Again, by John Coston****

Posted on October 31, 2016 by seattlebookmama

The Terrifying True Story of Montana’s Baby-Faced Serial Sex Murderer

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They say you should do what you’re good at, and unfortunately, Wayne Nance was good at killing people. He enjoyed his work. This is the true story of the man dubbed “The Missoula Mauler”, who killed primarily based on opportunity, high in the rugged Rocky Mountains between 1974 and 1986. Thank you to Net Galley and Open Road Media, from whom I received a DRC in exchange for this honest review. The digital version of this true crime story was released October 18, and so you can buy yourself a horrifying Halloween present today. But turn all the lights on before you dive in. Lock your doors, and check your windows. If you have a basement, secure that as well. This isn’t a thing you want to read while you’re home alone at night.

I don’t read much true crime, because it’s dark stuff. To be honest, I wouldn’t have read this one, but an Open Road rep contacted me by email regarding another title I had read, and she was having a Monday moment; consequently, she asked me to review this title rather than the one I had read, and I figured I’d been invited to read it. I don’t turn down an invitation unless I know for sure I won’t like the book, so really, I read this one mostly due to a misunderstanding. By the time it was cleared up, I had downloaded it and was 20% of the way in, and I wanted to see how it came out.

The interesting thing about Nance is that he doesn’t seem to fit the serial killer stereotype. He was a quirky guy, true. But nobody said he kept to himself, or that he was quiet. He was sociable, and he was considerate, an apparently thoughtful young man that would run an errand, drop something off at your house while you were working, bring you your lunch…of course, there was always a chance he’d either forget to return your house keys or make a copy to keep, but that couldn’t hurt you if you didn’t know about it, right?

Well, actually it could. Sometimes it did.

I recently reviewed Open Road’s Fire Lover, a true crime story in which the killer seems drop-dead obvious. That isn’t the case here. At one point Nance came up as a suspect, but he had an alibi. I think when a person lives in a small Montana town and terrible things happen, it’s comforting to assume that the horrific, violent things that have been in the local news are done by an outsider, someone passing through. Maybe it’s a trucker that drives through from time to time, or some other outlier. Nobody wants to think it’s someone they work with, that they see every day.

I have to tell you, this story is not just scary, but it’s also tragic. There are children involved. The book’s blurb says there are photos, but these are not grisly photos of dead people; nevertheless, I found my stomach turning over a time or two. It’s dark, dark business, and you alone know whether you want to read something like this. The satisfying thing is that he is caught, and so other people didn’t die that undoubtedly would have. But as for me, I don’t want to read any more true-serial-killer tales for a good long while, if at all.

That said, Coston has to wade through a lot of data to tell this story, and he does so without getting bogged down in minutiae while setting an appropriate tone and pacing the story expertly. He tells us about the victims so that their own stories will not get lost while we learn the ugly deeds of Wayne Nance.

For fans of true crime that have strong stomachs, this may be the story for you. One thing’s for sure: all your own troubles will look smaller when you are done here.