Everything She Ever Wanted by Ann Rule

Ann Rule is one of the best true crime writers I've ever read. She adds such feeling to the events surrounding the crimes that I get goose bumps. There were times when I was reading Everything She Ever Wanted that I just wanted to be able to grab people, shake them and yell, "Are you blind? Don't you know what's happening here?"

Patricia Radcliffe Taylor has since been nicknamed "The Deadly Magnolia". Loved and protected by her parents her entire life (probably until their deaths), Taylor has lied to and manipulated people to get what she wanted. Along the way, one of her husbands, Tom Allanson, was convicted of murdering his own parents ... but did he? I vaguely remember that story from the newspapers and the dry facts reported were pretty wild and unbelievable. It didn't end there. The road is strewn with the bodies of people Taylor drove over to get what she wanted out of life--and it was never enough.

I won't go any further into what happened in the book. It's pretty incredible and although it's disturbing and I wanted to put the book down several times, I'd say it's because Ann Rule did such a good job with her writing style and reporting. If I ever had to be in the same room as Taylor, I wouldn't be able to stay. I'd have to get as far away from that woman as I could.

Everything She Ever Wanted crosses another one off these challenges: