Before I discuss the content between the covers of this work, I want to comment on a few stylistic things I liked about Ann Rule's writing. First and foremost, her writing is concise, clear, and achieves the feat of seeming both plain spoken and yet sophisticated. She writes each true crime story in a way that left me feeling for the victim and the victim's family while yet sparking my curiosity about each of the killers.
Another nice thing about A Rage To Kill Was that I began reading it while I still lived in Iowa. I finished reading about one of the cases and then began the task of packing up all of my belongings for an interstate move to Tennessee. Four months went by before I found my mass market paperback to resume reading. I was able to pick up on a new case without any problems rather than having to reread in order to understand what I was consuming.
I have a fascination with murder cases and mystery fiction, so my interest in Ann Rule's book was high from the beginning. Another refreshing aspect of A Rage To Kill was that most of the individual killers were caught through good, old fashioned police work or mistakes made by the killers. There was a lack of the CSI effect to which modern police and attorneys refer. The public has grown to except a dramatic piece of DNA evidence that will solve a case in a matter of a few minutes or days. In reality, most cases don't have DNA evidence back and processed for several months and many times the DNA evidence simply isn't present or usable in real cases.
Rule included ten different murderers, ranging from a man who killed a bus full of people to people who killed their victims one person at a time. The story that most grabbed my attention and actually kept me awake for a few nights while I processed the information I had read earlier in the day was the spree killer, Christopher Wilder. I had never heard of spree killers before and was haunted by Wilder's actions. He not only murdered and tortured his victims, but he seemingly felt no remorse and preyed upon beautiful women in shopping malls and other public places. My false sense of security in public places was stripped from me as I read through his deeds. I live less than a two minute drive from a large shopping mall, and I couldn't help but imagine something similar occurring practically under my nose. Some of the things he did to the women he tortured will never be erased from my memory from reading Rule's book. Wilder's deeds were utterly disturbing.
I recommend this book and give it four stars, ****. The only thing holding me back from giving it a fifth star is that some of the cases were a bit outdated. The copyright is 1999 and many of the cases are a few decades old. I personally was still intrigued, but without a cold case type of story, cases that are from the 60s, 70s, and 80s, could be a turn off to some readers.
