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Saxton Reads! & Reviews

We invite the public to post reviews to our catalog by logging into our online catalog. Reviews will then be posted to this blog. Comments can be added to existing posts or may be added as separate reviews on our catalog
DECEMBER 28, 2008
Killer's Wife ~ Bill Floyd

****ckubala
 I love reading a debut novel. I'm always hoping to find a new voice that I want to follow or a new author I can recommend to someone. Bill Floyd wrote Killer's Wife with the BTK Killer, Dennis Rader in mind. Floyd, like many others, pondered the question of how a person who appears to be an upright citizen, community member, and family man, turns out to be a serial killer who leaves death, despair and broken lives in his wake. Floyd's story gives us an inside look at what it would be like to be the wife of the killer, the woman sleeping beside him, the father of her child, the woman who only discovers his horrible secret when it's far too late. When Leigh Wren does find out what her husband Randall Roberts Mosley has done, she turns him into police and testifies at his trial. She and her young son flee their home on the west coast, adopting a new identity and new home in North Carolina. She is just beginning to put the past to rest when Charles Pritchett, the father of one of her husband's victims, finds her and blows her new life apart. Pritchett clearly blames Leigh as well as Mosley for his daughter's death and makes her life miserable by outing her in her new community and threatening her son. Add a copy-cat killer on the loose and you have a first rate thriller.

I really like the way Floyd tells the tale. He does this in a series of flashbacks which give insight to the lives of Wren and Mosley, how they met, the early days of their marriage, the beginning of Leigh's doubts about Randall, revealing bits and pieces of each personality until we have a full picture in the end. Floyd nails Leigh's character right too. He does a good job of portraying Leigh's emotions, her sensitivity, and her voice, something not easy for a male author to do well.

I particularly liked this passage:
"Randy's name was all over the national media when the story first broke. Yes, he was that Randall Roberts Mosley. The papers always use the full name for assholes like him, a respect you never see granted to the victims. No, assassins and psychos are worth knowing by their full titles, but not the dead."

Some critics feel the book's potential fell short. They saw the shifting back and forth in Leigh's story confusing and awkward. I do not agree. I found it very easy to flow with the story.

A good read for true crime buffs, it explores the criminal mind almost too well.

An excerpt can be read at

http://us.macmillan.com/BookCustomPage.aspx?isbn=9780312373399#excerpt

Add a comment  (1 comment) posted by ckubala

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Comments

bas bleu said, on Feb. 16 at 3:11PM
I enjoyed this book up to the point where Leigh decides to rescue her son herself. It just didn't ring true to her character. I also would have liked to see all the details expanded upon a bit more. I felt that I was getting a superficial read of a series of events that had a compelling back story.

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