The Stranger Beside Me (First Edition, First Printing)

Rule, Ann

ISBN 10: 0393013995 / ISBN 13: 9780393013993

Published by W. W. Norton & Company, New York, NY, 1980

About this Item

Hardcover first edition and first printing (full number line to "1"). Some light foxing to the page block evident, otherwise the book is fine. The dust jacket has a small tear to the top front (.5 cm), is clipped on the inner fold corners, with a vertical crease. Very scarce in first printing. Seller Inventory # 003684

Bibliographic Details

Title: The Stranger Beside Me (First Edition, First...

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, New York, NY

Publication Date: 1980

Binding: Hardcover

Condition: Near Fine

Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good

Edition: 1st Edition

About this title

Synopsis:

The fascinating story of Ted Bundy, a brilliant law student now suspected of thirty-eight murders nationwide, as told by a crime reporter, former policewoman, and long-time personal friend of the convicted murderer

Review:

Not long ago, true crime writer Ann Rule recalls lying on an operating table. The anesthesiologist leaned over before putting her to sleep. "Ann," the anesthesiologist said softly, "tell me, what was Ted Bundy really like?" Despite meeting Florida's electric chair in 1989, the subject of Rule's bestselling book continues to haunt her. Rule and Bundy were friends. They met in 1971 at a Seattle crisis clinic, where they shared the late shift answering a suicide hotline. Their subsequent conversations, meetings, and letters spanned the rest of Bundy's life as he evolved into one of the century's most notorious serial killers. It's been 20 years since Rule first penned this chilling account. But the story--and her 2000 update--will still have readers reaching for their Xanax. No gratuitous gore here; just the basic, bone-chilling evidence. In fact, like a protective mother shielding us from horrors too awful to mention, Rule seems to avoid delving too deeply into crime scene descriptions. She devotes one paragraph in her new afterword to her discovery that Bundy engaged in necrophilia and returned to the scenes of his crimes to "line dead lips and eyes with garish makeup and to put blush on pale cheeks." She tells readers that John Hinckley, who shot Ronald Reagan, and David Berkowitz, the Son of Sam Killer, traded prison correspondences with Bundy. And she hints that Bundy's insatiable killer instincts may have started when he was a 14-year-old paperboy. (Ann Marie Burr, an 8-year-old girl on his route, mysteriously disappeared in the middle of the night and has never been found.) The skimpy update is over too soon, leaving readers wanting more and offering further proof of the public's never-ending fascination with serial killers. --Jodi Mailander Farrell