Former Seattle police officer and crime
author Rule (Small Sacrifices;
Dead by Sunset, etc.) knows a good drama when
she finds one: it
involves love, betrayal, greed and violence. In the story of Liysa
Northon, a woman who murdered her third
husband, Chris Northon, in
order to collect his insurance money, Rule has found a real-life soap
opera. In the fall of 2000, Liysa convinced Chris to go on a camping
trip with her and their small son in the remote forests of Oregon. But
the idyllic vacation didn''t last long; Liysa would later admit to
ending her husband''s life by shooting him in the head in an act of
"self-defense." From where she sits today (in an Oregon state prison),
she still professes to have shot Chris only in innocence and
fear-emotions she said were caused by her years as a victim of domestic
violence. But according to her husband''s parents and other sources,
Liysa is a manipulative sociopath who spent years crafting a public
façade of abuse persuasive enough to justify the cold-blooded murder of
her husband. Rule has done an impressive amount of research to
reconstruct the history of Liysa''s crime and the stories of the main
people involved, interviewing dozens of police officers, investigators
and private citizens across the country. And if the
author''s prose is
somewhat flat, the fascinating and perplexing drama should be more than
enough to keep most readers turning pages.