The author here is on a mission to prove that Ted Bundy and
other serial killers are not genius masterminds. In this novel, the Ted Bundy character is
known simply as The Defendant, and we learn fairly early in the novel that he
murdered two sorority sisters near the end of a killing spree that stretched
from Washington State to Florida. The
focus here is on the victims and the two first-person narrators—Pamela and
Ruth. To further complicate matters a
bit, Pamela narrates in two different timelines—the immediate aftermath of the
murders of two of her FSU sorority sisters and several decades later. Ruth is a victim whose body is never
found. Pamela also witnesses the escape
of the murderer as he exits her sorority house, making her one of the few
people who can identify him. The writing
here is good, and the plot is very suspenseful but confusing at times, and not
just because of the dual narrators and three timelines. A journalist named Carl apparently sees
himself as the next Truman Capote, but I was unable to follow exactly how he
fit into the picture. Although I realize
that the author does not want to give The Defendant too much airtime, I couldn’t
follow his various arrests, extraditions, and prison escapes, and my morbid
curiosity led me to wonder exactly how he slipped through so many fingers. Finally, there’s Ruth’s friend and mentor,
Tina, who has made it her personal mission to make sure that The Defendant is
brought to justice, but various law enforcement officials warn Pamela that Tina
is dangerous. I was never sure if the
author’s intent here was to introduce a red herring or simply to highlight the
poor judgment and incompetence that allowed so many women to lose their lives
even after The Defendant had been taken into custody—multiple times.
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