Reviews tagging 'Murder'

The Night Stalker by Philip Carlo

4 reviews

princxporkchop's review against another edition

challenging dark sad slow-paced

2.0

Starts off strong, but quickly becomes a repetitive, meandering mess. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Drug use, Violence, Murder, Addiction, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Misogyny, Death of parent, Injury/Injury detail, Sexual violence, Alcoholism, Gore, Grief, Self harm, Sexual assault, Blood, Cursing, Physical abuse, Rape, Stalking, Child abuse, Death, Confinement, Drug abuse, Gun violence, and Sexual content

tayahmarie's review against another edition

dark emotional sad tense slow-paced

5.0

I’ll start by saying that I would give this 10 stars if I could. Carlo did a stellar job at giving the reader a disturbing, depraved, and downright chilling deep dive into the mind of Richard Ramirez - aka The Night Stalker, who terrorized California during the summer of 1985. 

This book was a wild ride. I’m not even going to lie to y’all, and I’ve been thinking about it ever since I finished it. I can’t even put into words how wicked this information was. My heart was pumping and, I was terrified to go to sleep after reading Part One which, details Ramirez’s gruesome and vile crimes. It's difficult to imagine individuals like this who have walked and currently walk amongst us. You never really know someone, and what’s swirling around in their head. I also wanted to say that I was really interested in Part X that outlines Ramirez’s childhood and provided context on how he turned into the real-life boogeyman. 

I don’t want to give too much away, but I have to shout out Gil Carrillo and Frank Salerno for doing everything in their power to put an end to Ramirez’s reign of terror. If it wasn’t for them, who knows what the outcome would’ve been…and that’s a scary pill to swallow. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Murder, Violence, Torture, Sexual violence, Sexual assault, Sexism, Rape, Medical trauma, Injury/Injury detail, Gun violence, Gore, Drug use, Death, Body horror, and Blood

alanadcr's review against another edition

dark informative tense slow-paced

3.0

 This particular Philip Carlo was recommended by one of my favorite podcast duos (Small Town Murder and Crime in Sports) during one of their bonus episodes on serial offender childhoods.

Broken up into parts, Carlo takes us through the crimes weaving between the offender's perspective and victim as well as the key players in the investigation. After apprehending the alleged killer, Carlo takes us back through a thorough examination of Ramirez's childhood. Third, we go through the trial where the story went from intriguing to tedious. There was a lot of repetition of information and I honestly didn't care to hear about every minute of the trial. I went from binge listening to 15 minutes here or there until it was almost time to send my loan back.

Overall, an interesting book particularly Ramirez's background. I was fascinated by the groupies and women that obsessed over him (including a juror) and kind of want to know what in their background makes them so fascinated with him. The narrator did a fabulous job, my main issue is the author's inclusion of what felt like the entire record of proceedings in court. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Violence, Sexual violence, Murder, and Gun violence

kshertz's review against another edition

challenging dark tense slow-paced

3.75

It’s super informative and I got a lot more detail than the documentary. I was enthralled the first 300 pages. But then it went into a lot of court data that was just so detailed and then didn’t really seem to be necessary. It’s for someone who likes all aspects of law enforcement as well as the true crime aspects!

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Body horror, Child death, Death, Death of parent, Emotional abuse, Gore, Injury/Injury detail, Murder, Physical abuse, Rape, Sexual assault, Stalking, Torture, and Violence