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angus_mckeogh's review against another edition
1.0
I can completely sympathize with the large glut of reviews saying they were unable to finish this book. I read an article about the “10 Best” true crime books ever written. This was on that list with In Cold Blood and the like. It also took me forever to read. I failed to add it to my “Currently Reading” list for a long while because I was unsure if I’d finish the book. It was pretty bad. The characters were uninteresting, the story was preposterously stupid, and the writing was difficult to enjoy. The thing as a whole was just not gripping as most other true crime books I’ve read have been. The murder and the crux of the story were halfway through the book after the first half covered the uninteresting lives and backstory of the people involved. I put it aside repeatedly thinking I’d not return to it. Ultimately I just felt like I should finish it, or it’d get better once it hit the trial, or I was just too far along to stop. I’ll leave it at saying I was not rewarded for my due diligence. Just not good. Everything true crime shouldn’t be. I’m giving it two stars because I finished it. No...that’s rewarding myself. I’m adjusting that and taking one star away. It should only get one. I didn’t like it.
ltsakmann's review against another edition
3.0
While I didn't love Wambaugh's style of writing , this was a very compelling account of a true crime. I appreciated it because I went to college in collegeville,Pa which is nearish to the Philly area. I have read a fair amount of true crime and this is going to go in the category of strangest true crime novel I have ever read...........
iamshadow's review
2.0
I know this is a convoluted case with a lot of lies and manipulation involved, but I have read complicated true crime before where a gifted author has untangled the threads and kept the narrative ticking along. This probably took me as long to read as it did because the author couldn't quite do that. It was such an effort to try and work out what was going on. There was so much lying and so many false trails and complicated conspiracy theories just dumped in there that it was incredibly confusing and a chore to read. Rather than captivating, it was frustrating, which is a shame, because I think with a different approach it could have been a very interesting read.
additionaddiction's review against another edition
3.0
The real life story of the murder of an Upper Merion Pennsylvanian school teacher, the disappearance of her two children, and the teachers and principal who were involved.
I've lived in Pennsylvania basically my whole life and have lived in the Main Line area for the last 16ish years. Still, I never heard about this story until a few months ago when it was mentioned to me by a coworker who went to this school while these events were unfolding.
This book made more references than Archibald Cox Jr., and if you don't get that reference you're probably not going to get 90% of the other references in this book. Still, this is truly a crazy story, made even more crazy (to me at least) by the constant references to places, stores, schools, and roads that I drive past almost daily (at least, pre-pandemic).
The cast of characters is so bizarre that it almost feels like fiction. I think part of that can be chalked up to Wambaugh's almost tabloid-like style of writing. Everything felt overly sensational with too much detail being spent on the subjective appearance of people. e.g.
"Susan was even more petite than Sue Myers, and was definitely not attractive. She wore oversized glasses with dark plastic rims, an effect that accentuated a large blunted nose. Her lower lip protruded, pushed out by big gapped incisors."
In fact, several passages were pretty much racist in their descriptions. e.g.
"He was a smallish, ethnic-looking guy. You figured he'd spent his life eating deli food, but you weren't sure which deli."
This book was published in 1987, so I'm willing to give a little leeway based on the time in which it was written. Still, it's a tough read in 2021. That being said, the actual facts of this story were captivating enough to keep me invested until the end.
I've lived in Pennsylvania basically my whole life and have lived in the Main Line area for the last 16ish years. Still, I never heard about this story until a few months ago when it was mentioned to me by a coworker who went to this school while these events were unfolding.
This book made more references than Archibald Cox Jr., and if you don't get that reference you're probably not going to get 90% of the other references in this book. Still, this is truly a crazy story, made even more crazy (to me at least) by the constant references to places, stores, schools, and roads that I drive past almost daily (at least, pre-pandemic).
The cast of characters is so bizarre that it almost feels like fiction. I think part of that can be chalked up to Wambaugh's almost tabloid-like style of writing. Everything felt overly sensational with too much detail being spent on the subjective appearance of people. e.g.
"Susan was even more petite than Sue Myers, and was definitely not attractive. She wore oversized glasses with dark plastic rims, an effect that accentuated a large blunted nose. Her lower lip protruded, pushed out by big gapped incisors."
In fact, several passages were pretty much racist in their descriptions. e.g.
"He was a smallish, ethnic-looking guy. You figured he'd spent his life eating deli food, but you weren't sure which deli."
This book was published in 1987, so I'm willing to give a little leeway based on the time in which it was written. Still, it's a tough read in 2021. That being said, the actual facts of this story were captivating enough to keep me invested until the end.
emilyhei's review against another edition
mysterious
4.0
In 1989 schoolteacher Susan Reinert was found dead in the hatchback of her car. Her two children missing. Joseph Wambaugh pieces together what happened to Susan and the events that led up to it. The story revolves mainly around Dr. Jay Smith the principal of the school where Susan taught and William Bradford a teacher at the school who made a habit of charming the ladies. Secrets unfold and you are left guessing what really happened.
Well written, you are pulled in immediately. I was a bit shocked by a few of the events that unfolded.
Well written, you are pulled in immediately. I was a bit shocked by a few of the events that unfolded.
melissabalick's review against another edition
2.0
So, yeah, I went to Upper Merion, the high school where the murder victim and one of the murderers taught and the other murderer was the principal. Lots of people did, and we all talked about reading this book, but really, barely anyone did. Mostly, we'd pass around video cassettes of the TV movie that was made from the book, and we thought we knew enough from that. We probably did know enough from it. I mean, I'm 29 at the time of this writing, and the murders had taken place three years before I was born. The only reason any of us wanted to read this book was to find out about the involvement of our current teachers in this dirty, dirty story. When I was in high school, there were four teachers who are in this book by name who I had as teachers. Two are spoken about in the book more thoroughly, two less so. The book certainly does not affect my opinion of any of them, except to help me to understand that good people can often survive intense scrutiny, although not without scars.
The story is so bizarre and sensational and ultimately mysterious that it's a wonder that so many people in the book continued on at Upper Merion. One of them was one of the best teachers I've ever had. I'm honestly hesitant to mention him by name, because I'd hate for him to come across this review by Googling his own name. I feel like his life was adversely affected enough by this grotesque and bizarre story without having to suffer Googling into the future.
It's interesting. It think that the same murders would not happen today, because women in general are less vulnerable than poor Susan Reinert was back in the late 70's. I like to think that today's women would be more onto William Bradfield's game and that, at the very least, she would not feel it was appropriate or necessary to open insurance policies that benefited her boyfriend upon her death before their relationship was even out in the open to friends and family and coworkers. I think Sue Meyers, one of Bradfield's other girlfriends, would have gotten hip to him much sooner and felt empowered to act in response as well. And, hell. EVERYONE in the book today would have had the internet to help them make decisions about any number of things. Back then, it was just too easy to manipulate people by being charming and convincing. You could completely isolate people, like that doctor in Rosemary's Baby who forbids Rosemary to read books about pregnancy. These days, Rosemary would at least be posting complaints on Facebook and all her friends would be weighing in on what they thought of her so-called doctor.
The book itself is... OK. It's sensational. It suffers from distasteful similes, such as "He knew very well that Sue Meyers was busier than a Gulag gravedigger." And, I know this book was for a mass audience and that mass audiences don't like to sit with ambiguity, but what is really upsetting about the story is that there is so much that is unknown, and that will never be known. It is not cut and dry who committed these murders, and how, or even why. The senselessness of it is where the tragedy lies most intensely. Even after reading the book, even if you agree with the juries and the author who were convinced of Bradfield and Smith's guilt, it still feels really uncertain. What the hell happened? Why, and how? There are good theories, but none of them feel exactly correct.
I agree with Wambaugh, I think the right people were convicted. But I'm not sure there's really much to get out of this book, or this story. It's a sad one, and I like a sad story. But this one is not rife with meaning; rather, it drowns in tragic meaninglessness.
The story is so bizarre and sensational and ultimately mysterious that it's a wonder that so many people in the book continued on at Upper Merion. One of them was one of the best teachers I've ever had. I'm honestly hesitant to mention him by name, because I'd hate for him to come across this review by Googling his own name. I feel like his life was adversely affected enough by this grotesque and bizarre story without having to suffer Googling into the future.
It's interesting. It think that the same murders would not happen today, because women in general are less vulnerable than poor Susan Reinert was back in the late 70's. I like to think that today's women would be more onto William Bradfield's game and that, at the very least, she would not feel it was appropriate or necessary to open insurance policies that benefited her boyfriend upon her death before their relationship was even out in the open to friends and family and coworkers. I think Sue Meyers, one of Bradfield's other girlfriends, would have gotten hip to him much sooner and felt empowered to act in response as well. And, hell. EVERYONE in the book today would have had the internet to help them make decisions about any number of things. Back then, it was just too easy to manipulate people by being charming and convincing. You could completely isolate people, like that doctor in Rosemary's Baby who forbids Rosemary to read books about pregnancy. These days, Rosemary would at least be posting complaints on Facebook and all her friends would be weighing in on what they thought of her so-called doctor.
The book itself is... OK. It's sensational. It suffers from distasteful similes, such as "He knew very well that Sue Meyers was busier than a Gulag gravedigger." And, I know this book was for a mass audience and that mass audiences don't like to sit with ambiguity, but what is really upsetting about the story is that there is so much that is unknown, and that will never be known. It is not cut and dry who committed these murders, and how, or even why. The senselessness of it is where the tragedy lies most intensely. Even after reading the book, even if you agree with the juries and the author who were convinced of Bradfield and Smith's guilt, it still feels really uncertain. What the hell happened? Why, and how? There are good theories, but none of them feel exactly correct.
I agree with Wambaugh, I think the right people were convicted. But I'm not sure there's really much to get out of this book, or this story. It's a sad one, and I like a sad story. But this one is not rife with meaning; rather, it drowns in tragic meaninglessness.
mcmattiello's review against another edition
4.0
This was a difficult book to read because I knew that there would be no satisfactory ending. Two men went to death row but one gets off years later. One dies in prison never telling what happened to the children. Wambaugh does a good job of keeping it all straight. How much of the guilt can we lay at Jay Smith's door? How much at Bradfield? No answers here. But plenty of circumstantial evidence. This is a tragic case with no real resolution. Maybe some day new evidence will turn up, but I doubt it.
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