A Descent Into Hell: The True Story of an Altar Boy, a Cheerleader, and a Twisted Texas Murder

The things wrong with this book:

1. The title. I mean, A Descent into Hell? Really? It sounds like a title that the Lifetime TV movie people rejected as too trite. At least Baby Monitor: The Sound of Fear and Ski Lift to Death (hey, look them up if you don't believe me) had some character.

2. The subtitle. "An Altar Boy" and "a Cheerleader"? Need I say more?

3. The pacing. This is a story about a murder, people. Let's at least bring the pacing up to the level of an episode of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. If the narrative had been any slower, I would have had to don my gorilla suit and read the book while marching back and forth across the room to Sousa marches just to keep myself mildly entertained.

4. The editing. I actually show more started marking the diction and grammatical errors just because it was a lot more interesting than trying to keep my mind on the book. Examples: "disinterested" instead of "uninterested"; getting one's car "out of hock" to mean getting it out of an impound lot ("hock" means you sold it to a pawnbroker, duh). And I've rarely encountered a tin ear for dialog like the one on display here. A representative sample:

"Finally, she grabbed the arm of a young man in a uniform, shouting, 'Is my sister all right?' [At least it doesn't say "alright" -- I'll give the author that.:]
'Your sister's dead,' he said, pulling away.
When the man walked by again, Vanessa, sobbing, yelled, 'You don't know how this feels.'
'I do,' he said, more kindly. 'My sister jumped off a mountain in Greece last summer. All I can tell you is it will get better.'"

Uh. HUH. And:

"Vanessa's entire body ached. She'd never felt so alone."

Whoa, ace narrative technique there, Hoss! Maybe soon you can graduate to having one of the subjects of the book drop a family portrait so that the glass in the frame shatters.

5. The blurb by Ann Rule saying, "Kathryn Casey is one of the best true crime writers today." This statement is wrong on so many levels that I won't even bother to deconstruct it, but I will say that either the state of true crime writing is worse than I thought or there's some serious logrolling going on here.

Oh, I know, I know. This is what I get for reading true crime. You're probably right. Now excuse my while I go flip though In Cold Blood to get the taste of this thing out of my mouth. show less

This is the first book I have read by this author, I have mainly read Ann Rule, that being said, I enjoyed this as much as any of Ann Rule's books. It is very well researched, the author took the time to talk to as many people who knew the victim and perpetrator as possible. The events are detailed but not over dramatized and I was drawn into the story. She gave enough detail I was able to follow the events as they unfolded, but did not get bogged down. I even read through the trial part, something I usually skim through.

I would recommend this book to others.

I agree the title was overkill. The boy may have been an alter boy in his past, but that in no way defined him at the time of the murder. Unfortuneatly the story has become all too commonplace. Spoiled young people with no moral base getting into drugs, and later turning to violence. They all don't turn into murderers, but they seem to lack compassion for others. Perhaps the drugs have more of an effect on people than we really know, with it's ability to change the psyche of people, turning them into killers. It's a sad state of affairs for our country.

The title was overkill. The boy may have been an alter boy in his past, but that in no way defined him at the time of the murder. Unfortuneatly the story has become all too commonplace. Spoiled young people with no moral base getting into drugs, and later turning to violence. They all don't turn into murderers, but they seem to lack compassion for others. Perhaps the drugs have more of an effect on people than we really know, with it's ability to change the psyche of people, turning them into killers. It's a sad state of affairs for our country.

Good book that I enjoyed. Very well written but a sad story. 8.5