Reviews - The Devil at His Elbow: Alex Murdaugh and the Fall of a Southern Dynasty

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489 reviews for:

The Devil at His Elbow: Alex Murdaugh and the Fall of a Southern Dynasty

Valerie Bauerlein

4.43 AVERAGE

clairevola's review against another edition

5.0

challenging dark emotional informative tense fast-paced

beautifulmess81's review against another edition

4.0

This is the kind of non-fiction narrative storytelling that I *wanted* Jon Krakauer books to be, honestly. Bauerlein does a stunning job of distilling this incredibly complicated story into the important parts, without getting it muddy with lengthy tangents for the sake of history or context. She gives truly just enough history and just enough context to tell this story in the way it should be told, with compassion and emotion, and wonderful personal details. (I was personally struck in particular by some parts of Mark Tinsley's story, in particular the conversation between him and Judge Newman after the end of the trial. What a great scene.)

My only complaint is that of someone who has REALLY followed this story - in some places, I wanted MORE answers and MORE details that I knew they were there from other sources that I'd followed (like the trial and the SLED timeline, etc). But that's just my being petty, and that's not the book that Bauerlein set out to write, which is probably good. I have experienced the messy over-detail of some other nonfiction narratives and they inevitably meant I got bored in the middle (If I never hear another lengthy story about a specific detail of Mormon history, again looking at Kraukauer, it will be too soon).

So again, great job done here, even if I could have personally used more specifics on the case, especially during the trial portion (Maggie's cell phone and why it ended up where it did! The phone orientation switching in the timeline! And the ballistics angles! The nerdy stuff!) I know it was probably tough for her (and her editor) to edit as well, given all Bauerlein (a fantastic journalist for the WSJ - for those who watched the Netflix docuseries, you'll recognize her there) knows about this case, this family and this area of South Carolina. This is truly just fantastic journalism unspooled clearly for the lay reader. Now I just need the author to write some other books!