Twisted Triangle: A Famous Crime Writer, a Lesbian Love Affair, and the FBI Husband's Violent Revenge - Hardcover

Rother, Caitlin

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0787995851 ISBN 13: 9780787995850

Publisher: Jossey-Bass Inc Pub, 2008

Synopsis

A dramatic account of a real-life thriller describes the ordeal of FBI agent Margo Bennett, the dysfunctional reality of her marriage to fellow agent Gene Bennett, her lesbian love affair with celebrity author Patricia Cornwell, her husband's kidnapping of and attempt to murder Margo, and the trial that brought the facts to light.

About this title

About the Author

Caitlin Rother, a Pulitzer Prize-nominated investigative journalist, is the author of true crime books Dead Reckoning, Body Parts, Twisted Triangle and Poisoned Love, and the thriller Naked Addiction. She is also co-author of Where Hope Begins and My Life, Deleted. Rother has written for Cosmopolitan, the Los Angeles Times, the San Diego Union-Tribune, the Los Angeles Daily News, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, and The Daily Beast. John Hess, a retired FBI supervisory agent and Quantico instructor of 27 years, is the author of Interviewing and Interrogation for Law Enforcement and co-author of Writing for Law Enforcement.

From the Back Cover

Praise for Twisted Triangle

"This book will haunt you. It will move you to look at some of the harsh realities of life in a new way. A powerful story and masterfully written."
Aphrodite Jones, best-selling author, All She Wanted and Cruel Sacrifice

"A harrowing tale of one woman's struggle to maintain a balance between being a mother, an FBI agent, and dealing with a corrupt husband also an FBI agent. A must-read."
Joseph D. Pistone, aka Donnie Brasco

"Hitchcock wishes he'd dreamed it up. Capote wishes he'd written it. Rother's mesmerizing narrative chronicles a wife's heroic struggle against great odds to survive her psychopathic husband's elaborate scheme to make her murder the perfect crime. This spellbinding tale offers an added treat it's true."
Marcus Stern, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and author, The Wrong Stuff: The Extraordinary Saga of Randy "Duke" Cunningham, the Most Corrupt Congressman Ever Caught

"This in-depth account brought back memories of a most bizarre case, proving once again that the truth can be stranger than fiction."
Paul B. Ebert, Commonwealth's attorney, County of Prince William, Virginia

From the Inside Flap

Twisted Triangle

Twisted Triangle tells the compelling true story of Margo Bennett, a married FBI agent whose jealous, vengeful husband, Gene Bennett, a former undercover FBI agent, kidnapped and attempted to murder her after she had?a secret love affair with best-selling crime novelist Patricia Cornwell.

This series of bizarre events caused a sensation when it made national news a decade ago, but the whole incredible story has never before been told. Only now have Margo Bennett, her friends, and family granted investigative journalist Caitlin Rother exclusive access to personal interviews, previously sealed court records, diaries, letters, and other formerly confidential material. The book details the crazy dynamics of Margo and Gene Bennett's marriage and family, the rise and fall of their FBI careers, and Margo's clandestine lesbian affair with celebrity author Patricia Cornwell. Stranger than fiction, this story describes the makings of Gene's complex plan, his insanity defense, and the trial that ultimately vindicated Margo and sent Gene to prison, where he remains today.

Margo Bennett lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she is a captain of the University of California, Berkeley, campus police department. Gene Bennett is incarcerated in Virginia, not far from the Washington DC area, where the events of this fascinating true crime narrative took place.

Reviews

Though readers might pick up this title hoping to find out more about the private life of bestselling novelist Patricia Cornwell, the real protagonist is FBI agent Margo Bennett, who struck up a brief affair with Cornwell in 1992 after the author visited the training center where Bennett worked. When Margo's husband, also a Bureau agent, finds out about his wife's liaisons, he exacts a horrifying, meticulously plotted revenge, covering his tracks with lies and working the system against her. Though covered in the press, journalist and author Rother (Naked Addiction) presents the full story from Bennett's perspective for the first time. The narrative is engaging if a little slow to start (covering the early years of her marriage), and Rother is a fine interviewer, able to penetrate some of Bennett's most traumatic memories. Rother's prose is not the most graceful, and recreated dialogue can feel forced, but Bennett's tale is gripping, and should appeal to those who want to see a different, darker and more personal side of the lives of FBI agents.
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As the subtitle adequately implies, this breathless, lurid account of two FBI agents’ marriage-gone-wrong has it all, even though the crime writer alluded to, Patricia Cornwell, was only one of Margo Bennett’s lesbian loves, and the Sapphic romance with Cornwell is hardly the big story here. Husband-and-wife cat-and-mouse shenanigans are the main event, for Margo’s hubby, Gene, consumed by jealousy over his wife’s dalliances, concocted an intricate plan to kidnap and murder her. This is all written up in made-for-TV style, with lots of snappy, re-created dialogue and terse descriptions, perfect for an hour’s worth of A&E or Tru TV programming. Rother and Hess keep a fairly tangled story line perking sweetly along as readers share Margo’s searching story. Is she gay? Is Gene trying to do her in? And what about the kids, especially in light of scenes like the one in which a Bennett daughter discovers Margo in the embrace of another woman? It’s an Oprah-level tearjerker moment. A true-crime thriller with relationship issues! Is this a circulation booster, or what? --Mike Tribby

Edition details

• Publisher: Jossey-Bass Inc Pub
• Publication date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0787995851
• ISBN 13: 9780787995850
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 280