[.ca] Bitter Almonds: The True Story Of Mothers, Daughters, ... (ISBN 0312982003)

Well Written And In-Depth:
Stella Nickell: a South Sound skirted skinny, with pointed-rimmed black glasses, and straight long black hair. Something right out of an early 1960s yearbook. Looking like an all-American Tuesday night bowling leaguer in a working class suburb. "A bottle of bud and a shot of whiskey, please" to boot. The cyanide random poisonings sent waves of trepidation throughout the Puget Sound. Your stop for pain relief off of a random counter can relieve everything. To help her secure more insurance money in knocking off her husband, she put cyanide in a random bottle, placed it on a grocery store shelf, and then waited for an innocent person to die. This would take the focus off of her when she decided to rid herself of her boring tee-totaling spouse, and have authorities conclude it was the result of the random cyanide killer. But there was one unfortunate self-derived detour for Stella. After the coroner listed Bruce's death as the result of natural causes because of his chronic poor health, she realized she could get more insurance money if his death was listed as a homicide. She contacted the police and told them of her suspicions, leading to new tests not performed on the autopsy. His death was then listed as homicide. But her push for more ended up doing herself in. The one major mistake she made was not washing out a bowl before the mixing up the cyanide ingredients in her kitchen. Read the book for more chilling and dysfunctional details....

one perfect research:
Being a vivid true-crime reader I must say that this book really stands out from other true-crime books I have read over the years, the research is outstanding and it must have been a very difficult task for Gregg to get all that information from both families involved in this sad human tregedy. Stella Nickells thought that she could get away with murder for insurance money but the long hand of the law finally caught up with her, I have no doubth in my mind that she is guilty for both murders and she got what she deserved. It made me feel sorry for the third parties involved in this human trededy, thankfully few people who are living on the verge of poverty end up taking these crazy measures to make a quick buck, its no dishonour to be poor. A truly remakable book, a must read

What a great story, but poorly told.:
I bought this book because everything I had ever heard about the case of the Seattle cyanide murders fascinated me, and I had seen the author interviewed regarding the case-- he seemed to know his stuff. He certainly does, delving deep into the case and the people involved and often dragging you along, page after page, with the suspense. Unfortunately, I was distracted-- distracted enough not to finish the book-- by what seems to be a very sloppy writing style and perhaps poor editing. A few glaring errors, such as referring to someone by the wrong name, caused me to go flipping through the previous pages to see if I had made a mistake while reading. There are also smaller things like very poor and rambling sentence structures which confuse the reader and detract from the effect of the overall book. Who wants to get lost in the midst of jumbled names and commas when there is an interesting murder story going on? Most annoying to me is the melodramatic, "this-is-a-true-crime-book" method of referring to someone by what they do or what they look like instead of their name, CONSTANTLY, throughout the book. (I can't think of any actual quotes but for example, sentences like the following: "Max was called to the stand. The 50 year old truck driver stood and walked forward." After the tenth time of reading something like this it begins to sound tired and amateurish, and in the midst of a large cast of characters you often lose track of who is the 50 year old truck driver and who is the 60 year old road worker. Annoying. Could have definitely benefited from some clean and professional proofreading!

One Scary Woman - and she could be your neighbor!:
I read this book because the incidents took place in my hometown and I remembered reading about it in the paper. Gregg Olsen does an excellent job of "filling in the blanks" to give a more complete picture of what happened. The research was top-notch. I have since read other books by this author. I put him right up there with Ann Rule as a true-crime author (a HUGE compliment from me!)

Great Book Great Writer:
Gregg Olsen was great as usual. This book was very interesting and well researched as well. I only read true crime books and Mr. Olsen is one of my favorites. This book captivated me from beginning to end. Mr Olsen brings you the personal view as well as the professoinal view as well.