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"O'Neal persevered when less-committed investigators reasonably may have given up ["The Missing Girls"] is made greatly more urgent by the main investigator's familial ties."--"Booklist"
Product Description
Ashley Pond was only twelve years old when she vanished from a school bus stop in a town south of Portland, Oregon. As a shocked community came together and police began a frantic search, another tragedy was just about to take place. Miranda Gaddis was Ashley's best friend. Just two months after Ashley's disappearance, Miranda was on her way to school when she, too, was abducted. Nobody knew the scandalous, unspeakable secret that the two girls shared ...except for one man, who lived just one block away. The police and FBI managed to overlook the girls' neighbour whose daughter was a friend of Miranda and Ashley's - and who had a catalogue of sexual-assault allegations behind him. Author Linda O'Neal was a private investigator intimately involved in this shocking case. Now, she and her co-authors - also participants in the case - tell the chilling story of one town's devastating loss ...and how the murderer was finally found.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
32 of 33 people found the following review helpful
Format:Mass Market Paperback
This book sounded good and even started ok (it was well written if nothing else) but by the time I finished it I found it to be one of the most annoying books I've read.
The book was supposedly written by the 'grandmother' of one of the victims. The link between the victim and the author was so tenuous that to call her the 'grandmother' or 'step-grandmother' was laughable and smacked of someone trying to make money out of a very tragic situation.
The author wasn't really involved in this case (although I think she had convinced herself by the end that she had solved it single-handedly!) but she was a private investigator who did some research into it. This would have been fine and getting a PI view of a case would have given a good angle but it didn't quite work out that way.
The author saw fit to almost skim over details of the crime but to include every mundane, pointless detail of her conversations with her family and friends (yawn). I found myself skipping through the sections of the book that were about her (probably about a third of the book in total).
While this woman obviously cared about the case, she wasn't really anything to do with it. It's very easy to say that you knew who it was after the fact - if she had been so sure and had so much evidence, why didn't anybody listen to her at the time, I wonder (she described a scene where she took all her evidence to the FBI who apparently threw her out before she finished her first sentence)!? And it doesn't seem that she tried very hard - even when leads seemed to 'drop' into her lap, it appeared that she left them for weeks before following them up, if at all.
The most irritating bit of the book was after the murderer was finally apprehended (and only because of another crime he committed). The author's husband said to her (twice!) 'You did it, you got him'. I was wondering if I'd been reading a different book because, as far as I could see, the author had no part in it at all - she merely had some suspicions behind the scenes.
The whole book was very annoying and also did that annoying low-budget thing of printing the photos on cheap paper so they were hard to make out. I wish I'd spent my money on something else because this was a big disappointment.
The book was supposedly written by the 'grandmother' of one of the victims. The link between the victim and the author was so tenuous that to call her the 'grandmother' or 'step-grandmother' was laughable and smacked of someone trying to make money out of a very tragic situation.
The author wasn't really involved in this case (although I think she had convinced herself by the end that she had solved it single-handedly!) but she was a private investigator who did some research into it. This would have been fine and getting a PI view of a case would have given a good angle but it didn't quite work out that way.
The author saw fit to almost skim over details of the crime but to include every mundane, pointless detail of her conversations with her family and friends (yawn). I found myself skipping through the sections of the book that were about her (probably about a third of the book in total).
While this woman obviously cared about the case, she wasn't really anything to do with it. It's very easy to say that you knew who it was after the fact - if she had been so sure and had so much evidence, why didn't anybody listen to her at the time, I wonder (she described a scene where she took all her evidence to the FBI who apparently threw her out before she finished her first sentence)!? And it doesn't seem that she tried very hard - even when leads seemed to 'drop' into her lap, it appeared that she left them for weeks before following them up, if at all.
The most irritating bit of the book was after the murderer was finally apprehended (and only because of another crime he committed). The author's husband said to her (twice!) 'You did it, you got him'. I was wondering if I'd been reading a different book because, as far as I could see, the author had no part in it at all - she merely had some suspicions behind the scenes.
The whole book was very annoying and also did that annoying low-budget thing of printing the photos on cheap paper so they were hard to make out. I wish I'd spent my money on something else because this was a big disappointment.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
16 reviews
14 of 14 people found the following review helpful
Wow, is this written poorly
20 Jan 2007
Format:Mass Market Paperback
I have read thousands of true crime books and this is the second-worst I have ever read, in terms of the writing. That's saying a lot, considering that the genre is not generally known for its artistic quality. I found it almost unreadable. It's very difficult to follow the story because of the confusing references, constant switching of voices and tenses, and general lack of literary imagination. Details are thrown in that add nothing to the story. It is just a hopeless mish-mash.
As the previous reviewer noted, this could have been a decent book. It has a lot of the elements of a typical true-crime story: murder, innocent victims, deviants, mystery. Too bad they don't come together here. Don't wast your time.
As the previous reviewer noted, this could have been a decent book. It has a lot of the elements of a typical true-crime story: murder, innocent victims, deviants, mystery. Too bad they don't come together here. Don't wast your time.
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Terrible Writing !!
20 Jan 2007
Format:Mass Market Paperback
This was a book written by a 6 yr old...The author claims she is "The Lead Private Investigator on this case. Truth is, she is an unpaid relative, with no talent. She never fails to remind you how much her husband admires her, and how much more she knows than the FBI. I'm really surprised that the Publisher accepted this book. Could have been a great story. I certainly hope Ms. O'Neal gives up writing,,,
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
COULD have been fascinating--it's a shame, really
18 Jan 2007
Format:Mass Market Paperback
This is without a doubt one of the most amateurishly written yet professionally published books I've ever attempted to force myself to slog through. The story itself, a yarn about a private dectetive investigating the mysterious disappearance of two abducted children, has the requisite amount of pathos and mystery to form the basis of a real page turner, which is the only reason I'm giving it two stars instead of just one. Unfortunately, the best raw material in the world does not write itself, and in this case, the lacking element was the services of a ghost writer who actually knew his or her craft. Unfortunately, the publisher and authors did not avail themselves of those services, and the result is a book that reads like it was written by a sixth grader. This publisher must have had extremely low standards or perhaps just been really desperate to get something about this particular crime into print. Probably both. It remains to be seen whether I'm going to be able to get all the way through it or not. The only reason I've stayed with it this long is that I really want to see how the bastard who killed those little girls finally got nailed. Only for hard core true crime fans with a high tolerance for really bad writing.
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