Only the Truth

When Billy Ray happens upon a befuddled little waif with a red suitcase standing by the railroad tracks, he approaches her. The girl’s name is Charlene and she asks Billy Ray if she can go home with him. He picks up her suitcase, takes her hand, and they walk the three miles down Makin Road to Billy Ray’s house.

Except for Big Dog, Billy Ray has no family. He’s lived his entire life in the same house on Makin road. Billy Ray’s daddy died before he was born and his momma shortly after. His aunty moved into their house and raised him but she passed on when Billy Ray was only fourteen years old, leaving him to fend for himself. Charlene fits right into Billy Ray’s uncomplicated lifestyle. They settle into a routine, unencumbered by past deeds or future longings—a life lived entirely in the present and bound by simple pleasures. But when an old man moves into the house across the street, the past rears its ugly head and life is forever changed. After the old man dies, Billy Ray must confront Charlene’s past and solve a mystery to save her life. The literary whodunit that follows draws the reader into a series of plot twists and turns that lead to a stunning end.

I like Pat Brown’s nonfiction, especially The Profiler: My Life Hunting Psychopaths and Serial Killers, one of the best memoirs I've read in a long time. I was curious if her novel could stand up to it, and it did. Only the Truth, written in a similar spirit as John Grisham’s The Painted House, is a memorable read guaranteed to hold the reader’s attention from the first page to the last. It is a simple, honest story of unconditional love and loyalty. Billy Ray and Charlene have no preconceived expectations, no desires beyond their life together, and they share a mutual adoration cloaked in naïveté. Their small town of Whitfield Glen could be any “Smallville,” U.S.A., plucked out of Sherwood Anderson’s Winesberg, Ohio, or the small Mississippi towns of Eudora Welty. Brown’s characters have a depth and richness that are increasingly absent in contemporary fiction and she weaves a compelling mystery into the fabric of Billy Ray’s and Charlene’s relationship.

Pat Brown is nationally known for her work as a criminal profiler. She is the CEO of The Sexual Homicide Exchange and president of The Pat Brown Criminal Profiling Agency. Her latest book, 
How to Save Your Daughter's Life: Straight Talk for Parents from America's Top Criminal Profiler will be out in August.

Only the Truth is available as an e-book from Amazon. 

"In the Still of the Night" is a murder in disguise

In life, as in death, things are not always what they seem. That was certainly true in the death of Ronda Reynolds. On the morning of December 16, 1998, Ron Reynolds called 911 and reported that sometime during the night his wife had shot and killed herself. Although her body lay just a few feet from the bed where Ron had slept, he claimed that he had not heard the single gunshot that took his wife’s life. The beautiful 33 year-old former Washington State Trooper lay in a pool of blood, wrapped in an electric blanket, a single gunshot wound to her temple. The cause of Ronda’s death was initially reported as undetermined, months later as suicide, back again as undetermined, and finally as suicide.

Within just a few months of Ronda and Ron Reynolds’ marriage, Ronda realized that she had made a serious mistake in her choice of a husband. The unmistakable signs that Ron was engaged in an extra-marital affair with his ex-wife and his preoccupation with money led Ronda to her decision to end the marriage. Ann Rule examines the facts and circumstances surrounding the death of Ronda Reynolds in her new true crime drama, In the Still of the Night.

“A death investigation is such a delicate procedure,” says Rule. “The best detectives must always view it first as a homicide, second as suicide, third as accidental, and finally as a natural death.”

Based largely upon statements made by Ron Reynolds, Lewis County Sheriff’s investigators assumed that Ronda’s death was a suicide. Only one detective, Jerry Berry, ascertained that the young woman’s death was homicide. Ann Rule deftly ferrets out truth from fiction in this mystery and puts the facts together as a cohesive whole that leads to the unmistakable conclusion that Ronda Reynolds was murdered.

Rule and Ronda’s mother, Barbara Thompson, worked together for over a decade to unravel the truth about Ronda’s death. Acclaimed forensic law enforcement consultant Vernon Geberth believed that the crime scene was staged and called the investigation a “major police malfeasance.” According to Geberth, “there are very few cases of which I can state with such strength and conviction that this was a homicide.” New York forensic and behavioral evidence expert, Ray Pierce, called the ruling of suicide “ridiculous.” Would a judge and jury agree? This reviewer will not disclose the results of the trial which sought to discredit the coroner who made the suicide ruling in Ronda’s death.

Ann Rule has often been called the “queen” of true crime. In the Still of the Night reinforces her well-earned title. As usual, her character development is strong and thorough and brings the reader into the story. Rule’s former police experience and her involvement with high-profile criminal cases have helped her hone and perfect her detective skills which she brings to bear in Ronda’s case. Together, Ann Rule and Barbara Thompson are undefeatable.

 

“To let a politically corrupt law enforcement agency lie, cover up, and disregard a human life to benefit their self-image is unacceptable,” says Barbara Thompson on her web site http://www.justiceforronda.com/story.htm. “The Lewis County Sheriff's Department and all other law enforcement agencies in our country need to be held accountable for their actions, so that no other parent, ever, will have to experience this type of indescribable nightmare.”

Diane Fanning's "Mommy's Little Girl" will break your heart

There is no crime quite so heinous as the killing of one’s own child. In recent years the headlines have been riddled with names of child-killing mothers such as Andrea Yates, Susan Smith, Darlie Routier, and Casey Anthony. New Braunfels true crime writer Diane Fanning analyzes the case of Casey Anthony, the young Florida mother accused of murdering her two year old daughter, Caylee Anthony, in her new book Mommy’s Little Girl.

When two-year old Caylee Anthony was reported missing by her grandmother in June, 2008, there was an outpouring of public sympathy from across the United States. When the little girl’s body was discovered five months later by a utility worker just a quarter mile from the Anthony home, public sympathy was transformed to public outrage. And then when chloroform and gasses from human decomposition were found in the trunk of Casey Anthony’s car, the young mother was arrested for capital murder.

Anthony claimed that little Casey had been kidnapped a month earlier by her babysitter. When she pointed out the babysitter’s apartment to the police, the officers discovered that it had been vacant for months. When asked why the kidnapping had not been reported when it happened, a month prior, Anthony was unable to provide a coherent response.

Fanning skillfully traces Casey Anthony’s string of lies, deceptions, and erratic behavior to a logical conclusion: the young mother is the most likely killer of her two-year-old daughter.
Anthony had claimed to friends and family that she was employed by Universal Studios in Orlando when actually she had been fired by that company months before. She repeatedly stole checks and money from her mother, grandmother, and friends. During the one month interlude during Caylee’s “secret” disappearance, Anthony got a tattoo “Bella Vita” (beautiful life) on her shoulder and partied and drank incessantly. When asked by her friends the whereabouts of her daughter Caylee, Anthony claimed that the toddler was with her nanny.

This is a dark and gruesome tale of an unthinkable act of a mother whose cunning and duplicitous acts destroy everyone unfortunate enough to be in her path. It is also a story of a family so dysfunctional that the month-long disappearance of a toddler went unnoticed.
The Casey Anthony trial is set for next summer. Florida prosecutors are asking for the death penalty.

Fanning based her book on a careful review of more than 6000 pages of transcripts of police interviews, police reports, and other official documents, as well as audiotaped and videotaped conversations and interviews, plus information gathered from on-site research and personal interviews.

Fanning is the author of the Edgar Award finalist Written in Blood: A True Story of Murder and a Deadly 16-Year-Old Secret That Tore a Family Apart, as well as nine other true-crime books, the Lucinda Pierce mystery series, and a Molly Mullet mystery.

Fanning will be discussing and signing her book at Read All About It Bookstore in Boerne on Thursday, November 12, 2009 at 5:00 pm. Light refreshments will be served. Call Read All About It at 830-249-7323. You can check out Diane Fanning’s web site at http://dianefanning.com.

Book Details: Mommy’s Little Girl by Diane Fanning, ISBN 978-0312365141, St. Martin’s True Crime, November 3, 2009. paperback, $6.99. Available through all booksellers.