I admit, I have always been a bit fascinated with true crime.  That – I realize feels weird to say.  How to put this… the human mind is a fascinating thing, when you add in whatever makes psychopath’s do what they do… and usually justify it – I don’t even know what to say.  ~Sheila

Disclaimer…  I see as this year starts out my reviews have been ummmm… border line murderous?  Those of you who have read my reviews (or look at my review list) know better.  I read all over the board – just for some reason as I am catching up on reviews I see I have had a series in a row of these reads – not as dark as this one I am about to share with you.. but mystery dark all the same.  I assure you, lighter stuff is on the way 🙂  There have been some re-reads for book groups I am involved in such as Left Neglected (sooooo good), The Husbands Secret (ooh!), Big Little Lies (I will talk about this discussion soon), and Turtles All The Way Down for my book club that meets tonight).  See – they are coming 😉

SON.

I believe, if I recall correctly, I found SON while choosing audio on Audible.com.  I do, as I mentioned, enjoy (cringes at the word) the occasional true crime and SON’s synopsis of being an old crime and then rewritten with a new forward by another author.  That caught my attention.  Why rewrite a true crime? 

SON is about a serial raper in the Spokane Washington area in the 1980’s.  Fred Coe raped more women than can be actually known over a two year period.  He was described as handsome, kind, and a down to earth attitude that would not make you think twice about him (Bundy?).  He mainly watched bus lines or jogging trails for women alone.  The crazy think IMO – was he was not that good at it and I was mostly baffled by how long it took to capture him.

What do I mean?

Well, often his face was not covered.  He threatened the women of course to not tell or he would be back, and they did not.  Often – he could not perform.  He would ask the women if they enjoyed what he was doing, using vulgar language, etc…

A newspaper offered a reward for the rapists arrest – as it turns out, Gordon Coe, the editor of the newspaper took the calls that came in about the reward, only to later find out it was Fred Coe – Gordon’s son who was the rapist.

This book (I went with audio) was way longer than it needed to be.  The narration took a bit of getting used to, a monotone style voice that was used when they described the rapes and what the women said or what Fred said, grated at me for a large part of the audio as I felt it did not fit the scene.  The book is (IMO) over detailed, dragging out way longer than it needed to be.  I mainly kept listening as I was baffled by all that was said, that it took local law enforcement so long to capture him.  I had to know what finally happened.

As true crime goes, I would not recommend this one.  As mentioned, it was too drawn out for me, and while it held my attention, it was not something I could not wait to get back to. Unless you have connection to the Spokane area or the crimes themselves, I would say pass on this.