I am sadly and steeply disappointed by previous reviews here, of those who scream "nothing new" and "the killer isn't revealed" or some equal nonsense. Did the reader really expect to pay $6 to solve the murder? Reality is a cold drink of water, my friends. At least give Dr. Wecht the credit he deserves. Of course it's the same info, we're all working from publicly accessible documents here! If he broke the case beyond a shadow of a doubt and to a moral certainty, he'd be sitting in jail for breaking the law, which would almost exclusively be the way to get the information! As a journalist, I can sympathize with the critical: the book does get a little tedious and lost in the details that seem to swirl around the consequential players in the case. But the concise examination of fundamental evidence cannot be ignored. Wecht's resources and access are limited, but his analysis of what IS available is both gripping and intimate. Dr. Wecht, I would be very honored to hear from you myself, and you feel free to drop me an e-mail anytime. I'd be glad to have you in my corner if the sky began to fall.

I completely disagree with readers who've called this book "disappointing" and said that it shares "nothing new." Cyril Wecht's interpretation of the forensic report sheds light on motive, opportunity, and means. Charles Bosworth's writing is of a very high quality for true-crime books. The authors do an excellent job of providing the differing points of view in the case (police, DA's office, and the Ramsey family), but they don't shy away from educated speculation (which of course is what all of us who are so interested in the case are engaged in). I would recommend it to fellow Court TV junkies and those with an interest in true-crime stories.

I don't understand why other people have trashed this book. Cyril Wecht's analysis of the crime scene and autopsy report is the best description of the murder out yet. He is methodical, logical, and draws on years of experience. And, his scenario matches the available evidence. I think this is the best book on the JonBenet Ramsey case available now.

This book is a good case of "too much information". After 100 pages, I was thoroughly lost. The author introduces all of the many players in the death and suqbsequent murder investigation: family, friends, neighbors, coworkers, police, private investigators, DAs....even Santa Claus! Their relationships to the Ramseys and to each other in the investigation are all detailed up front, but I soon found myself unable to remember who was who when their name cropped up again 200 pages later. He should have put some type of legend up front listing all the caharacters and a one-line description of who they were, so that those of us without photographic memories could have a quick reference tool to aid us. Although the author is extremely thorough and he clearly didn't want to leave any detail out, he needed to tighten this up....a lot. A good, concise read containing only the most powerful information could have been accomplished in 400 or 500 pages;I found myself skimming the 798 pages, trying to root out the good stuff

I liked this book though I thought it had too much info. It's 800 pgs and its detail after detail. It takes a lot of time and patience to read.

If whodunits are bread for your brain, the detail in this book will feed you till you can't eat anymore. Schiller is the master of complicated, convoluted detail and never more so than in this fiercely tangled skein of unbelievably compromised crime scene evidence and bickering. leaking, politicking, inexperienced law enforcement agencies. While the disappointment of not knowing with a certainty who killed JonBenet at the end of 640 pages is palpable, nevertheless there were feasts of information leading up to that regrettable conclusion and my knowledge of the crime was greatly enhanced by this book. I have read all of Schiller's books and will continue to do so. I want the organized detail that only he brings to true crime. It is not Schiller's fault that no one has yet been arrested in this case and to castigate him or his book for it is a bit like shooting the messenger. In exquisite, careful, chronological detail in a murder case that absolutely defies organization or clarity, at least Schiller has brought me up to date. I'll read the rest of it when he writes it... when someone is arrested and convicted of this brutal murder of a child that simply defies belief as do all the circumstances surrounding it.

Stephen White, Remote Control (Signet, 1997)

Remote Control is very much one of _those_ mysteries, the kind that makes you read a couple of paragraphs at every stoplight. (Please control the urge to read while driving.) By now, we should all be familiar with White's cast of characters (Remote Control is the fourth Alan Gregory, psychiatrist-turned-don't-wanna-be-detective, novel) and his method of dropping loads of bricks on us when we're not looking, and slipping the clues in while we're still rubbing our head and cursing the building contractors. This time around, White gives us a self-absorbed technowhiz entrepreneur, a law-student intern with a recently-dead Senator father who falls head over heels for him, his abrasive partner, and a parallel thread running through the novel at the end of everything, where Alan's wife Lauren is being interrogated for the shooting of an unidentified man. Problem is, no one, including Lauren, is sure she actually shot the guy.

Yes, it all comes together perfectly (think Memento, except that both threads are moving forward-- one just moves more slowly than the other). White is one of those guys who writes good, clean, fun mysteries that are on the level of the big guns, but never gets the press they do. If you haven't yet picked up a Stephen White novel, give him a shot next time the New York Times Bestseller types are between books. *** 1/2

Could Stephen White have written any more twists into this book? Would it be possible for more characters to be in jeopardy? The book starts out with Emma, the daughter of an assassinated politician, and her quest for privacy. Did Lauren, in an attempt to defend Emma's privacy, shoot someone? Lauren is arrested for what may become capital murder, and the complications from her MS are quickly threatening her life. Alan must not only battle the system to get Lauren to the hospital, but also find a way to solve the crime and get her out of jail. Unfortunately, his own culpability prevents him from being completely honest with his police friend Sam, who might be able to help. This book is full of thrilling legal maneuvering, and White uses a type of flashback writing that really keeps your interest going and your brain working to sort out the events. This book is not as good as some of White's others, but it is definitely worth the read for White's avid fans.

I have read all of Stephen White's books, and this is the best one yet. I could hardly believe it when I reached the end. I began reading the book and then "boom" it was over and I don't think I had taken a breath during the whole thing. The main characters were all familiar from his previous books, but this time they were like old friends and not just names on a page. The plot of the book, which involves high tech use of computer and the abuse heaped by the press on celebrities, is timely and intriguingly combined. Hats off to White and I hope that he hurries his next Allen Gregory book along.

John Heminway's hippie-commune-turned-subdivision is an environmental and community tragedy, but he and his trust fund find it a paradise. This book is instructive for its unintentional exposition of the hypocrisy, condescension, and self-absorbtion that the super-rich bring to "their" Montana. But if you know anything about the state, it's truly painful to read.

Not just in need of the most basic proofreader, the book contains dozens of factual errors. (I was particularly surprised that National Geographic would place the Missouri River in Fargo.) Not only does Heminway blandly repeat the same old stories, but in getting them wrong (not only does he botch the story of Charlie Russell's painting "Waiting for a Chinook," he even inflates its alternate title from "Last of the 5,000" to "Last of the 10,000") he does a tremendous disservice to anyone who would find this representative of Montana.

Avoid this book! If you want to read about this region, read Mark Spragg's "Where Rivers Change Direction" -- not only a more accurate book, but a truly eloquent memoir.

"Yonder" (subtitled "A Place in Montana") by John Hemingway is an untidy book, but one I still recommend to readers interested in the west. Hemingway is an expert on Africa, a producer of documentary films for PBS, a writer, and a Montana "hobby rancher". Noel Perrin used the phrase "hobby farmer" to identify people who buy farms in Vermont in order to feel connected with the soil and the hardy Yankee yoemen who till it, but who continue to derive most of their income from some other source. The book relates Hemingway's experiences after he and members of his family purchase first a ranch in central Montana and then a 36-acre mountain retreat, named the Bar 20, north of Yellowstone Park. He interweaves events and observations from his own life in Montana with his search for information about the previous owners of the Bar 20.

One of the pleasures of the book is Hemingway's gift for vivid word snapshots of people he encounters in Montana. His filmaker's eye rests briefly on organic rancher Tom Elliott, BLM archeologist Michael Kyte, outfitter Larry Lahren, horse whisperer Ray Hunt, ranch foreman Floyd Cowles, teepee manufacturer Don Ellis, and his motley neighbors in the Boulder River valley. The sketches are illuminations of ordinary lives rather than (a la Annie Proulx) a lepidopterological display of "characters". The book's other strength is the mini-biography of Stanley and Bab Cox, easterners like Hemingway, who owned the Bar 20 from 1933 to 1951 and who, unlike Hemingway, resided there continuously except for the war years. Hemingway's determined and ingenious research has unearthed a story worthy of a novel.

"Yonder", published by the National Geographic Society Adventure Press, is the worst-edited book I have encountered in some time. It is rife with typos: missing quotation marks, uncapitalized proper names, "souh" for "south", "there's" for "theirs", "Yate's" for "Yates'", "shooting match" for "shouting match", and a missing negative that turns a sentence about organic farming into nonsense. It is also guilty of dubious or incorrect word usage. Examples: three sheets of paper become in the next paragraph three sheaves of paper; a hinged bookcase hiding a door is called "trompe l'oeil". And what is one to make of this sentence? "While grounds for abandoning a six-year-old child seem inconceivable, we can speculate he justified his decision because, perhaps, he felt rejected by the Hydes, who clearly had never warmed to a man they regarded as a diffident provider, husband, and father."

Hemingway grafts a couple of self-contained essays (previously published articles?) onto the stalk of his narrative. They deal with native American activities in other parts of the state and artist Winold Reiss. These are interesting in their own right, but anti-climatictic after the drama of the Cox research.

"Yonder" will save future owners of the Bar 20 the trouble of playing detective in order to find out what John Hemingway was doing and thinking during his days in Montana.

I loved Yonder. It is the story of John Heminway's search to uncover the history of a ranch in a beautiful Montana valley. John and his sister, Hilary, bought the ranch soon after they had found it with the help of a knowledgeable agent. As Yonder unfolds I fell under its enchantment and could not put it down until I found out what John had discovered through his search for its past owners. However, Yonder is more than a paean to Montana as moving as Ivan Doig's This House of Sky or Rick Bass's Seven Mile Wolves. It is also the story of the author's search for peace and joy. This is heartfelt book should fascinate those who enjoy interesting people and unique places.

The City is grand. The book does an adequate job in describings sites and getting you around town. Was it the best book? It worked well for us although we were looking for more definitive 'must see's.

Carol Cail's "Unsafe Keeping" begins when Maxey Burnell, co-owner of an independent newspaper, is nearly hit by a driverless van. Not to long after that, a similar incident results in the death of a pedestrian. At the same time, an arsonist has begun to set fires in the Boulder, Colorado, neighborhood Maxey calls home. Partially because of her role as a reporter but more because of a personal connection to the various incidents, Maxey investigates and finds that the clues seem to point to the struggle between preservationists and developers over a mansion that was once a prominent brothel.

While Maxey is trying to unwind the complicated but interwoven events, she tries also to figure out just where her ill-defined relationship with a homicide detective is going--if anywhere. "Unsafe Keeping" is certainly competently written, but it is too lean for much more. Though Cail works in a twist ending, the twist does not come off convincingly. The heroine-in-peril scenario that is rather hackneyed already makes an appearance here. While Cail at least avoids the problem of the heroine who rushes blindly into obviously dangerous situations, the convention seems too formulaic here, and the result is that the novel suffers. Certainly there are mysteries that are far less effective, but there are those that are far better, too.

Tried to get interested but I find the character of Alan Gregory just a bore. There are some fine sequences in this book but I felt like I was reading one of those parlor mysteries where the ramblings of the main characters were more important than the mystery itself. When the villian is revealed at the end I found myself not buying it. Maybe because of the lack of real character development or the lack of empathy for Alan Gregory. This is the third Alan Gregory novel by Stephen White that I have read and this time I have asked myself 'is that all there is? I think that this series is worth the effort to read but I warn you not to start with this entry. You may be put off and ignore others from this author which are very good reads. Also be aware that some books of the series shift the main character emphasis from Alan Gregory to Lauren Crowder, his girl firend/wife.

Found this offering a little slow and somewhat hard to follow. I found it slow for a 100 pages then it picked up and dropped me again. I really think that it was somewhat of a confusing story and never really brought together. I will read others as I try never to base my opinions on one book and it seems that his earlier books rated higher.

[...] Having read enough cozies in my life to still be able to count them on one hand, I have come to the probably erroneous conclusion that the main difference between the cozy mystery and the hard-boiled detective novel is that the investigator in the cozy is never in quite as much immediate physical danger as is the hard-boiled chap. Even if the chap in question isn't too hard-boiled.

Such is the case with Boulder, CO psychiatrist Alan Gregory, the hero of Stephen White's open-ended series of mystery/thrillers. regory spends his time getting shot at, beaten about the head, henpecked, and otherwise threatened by a bevy of adversaries and never enjoying it much. The best kind of detective-- an amateur who gets too wrapped up in his cases.

In this case, it's hard to avoid. The victim is Gregory's next door neighbor, a woodcraftsman who was designing sets for a theatre production in town. The murder is similar in some ways to a previous murder in Denver, and so the local police start thinking "serial killer." Gregory's PD pal Sam Purdy hires him on as an amateur profiler, and away we go.

Stephen White is a solid writer of thrillers, easily as good as any of the A-list names working in the genre today. His lack of widespread readership continues to baffle me. Harm's Way is of a piece with the rest of the Alan Gregory novels, and comes just as highly recommended from this camp. *** 1/2

Don't read this looking for slip ups or unconscious revelations about the role of the Ramseys in the death of their daughter. This is a closely edited, legally observed, and unabashedly self-serving book. (I'd love to see what was edited out.) Yet, between the lines we can catch a glimpse or two about who the Ramseys really are and what they are about and what they believe.

This is a well written and very well edited exercise featuring a centerfold of family portraits, including several modest shots of JonBenét. The Ramseys give a close rendering of the events of Christmas day, 1996, and the next morning. The story of Patsy's successful fight against cancer is told in some detail, and the beauty pageant issue is addressed. The book ends with John Ramsey's profile of the murderer and a chapter of advice on how to protect your children. There is no index.

Throughout, the Ramseys tell their story in the first person in alternating sections. First John speaks and then Patsy, and then John again, and so on. What they are intent on demonstrating is their innocence. They try to accomplish this by convincing the reader of their abiding love for JonBenét and for God, and their adherence to the Christian faith. Both seem to have a special relationship with God that allows them to hear his voice. John writes "there's a point where...you know and understand the truth of what God has done through human history and you grasp his plan for the future through his son, Jesus Christ" (p. 72).

Patsy in particular has felt the "divine intervention" in her life on many occasions, particularly in her successful battle against cancer (p. 77), but also when her cable TV line was accidentally cut, thereby preventing her from hearing the lies about her on television (p. 230). She has received messages from God (e.g., on pages 82 & 243). In fact in several spots Patsy seems to liken her experience to that of Jesus. As she was watching the "Geraldo Rivera Show" on October 22, 1997, for example, she heard voices calling for the crucifixion of herself and her husband (p. 229). And as Christmas, 1997 approached, her faith, like that of Jesus, was sorely tested, and she found herself "mad at God" and screamed, "I hate Christmas!" But there came a "stillness at the center of" her "being" and she "received a message from God" telling her that she more than anyone needed Christmas, and her faith was restored.

Even in day to day activities, Patsy found herself calling on God to guide her and he did. For example, before picking up the phone to insinuate herself into the Princess Di media discussion she was watching on Larry King Live, Patsy told her mother, "I'm praying that God will give me the right words." After being on hold for a while, "suddenly" she was "talking on live television, launching...into an attack on Larry King..." (p. 210). She relates on the next page that she was so successful that Larry King called to thank her and to ask her to appear on his show.

Almost as annoying as this "holier than thou" posturing was the Ramsey's unrelenting attack on the media and the Boulder police as the cause of all their troubles. I thought it was significant that they blamed the police leadership more than they blamed the officers who had so compromised the crime scene (p. 178). I also thought it telling that John Ramsey in particular tried to tie the crime to "how transient" their "University Hill neighborhood really was," and to people who "pushed New Age experiences" (p. 204). In Lawrence Schiller's book, he is quoted as saying that Bill McReynolds ("Santa Claus") should be a suspect partly because "he doesn't have two nickels to rub together." This high-handed and snide tone, I believe is as much responsible for the public's suspicion of the Ramseys as anything else.

Nonetheless, after reading three books on the subject, I am forced to say that I don't think there's enough evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that they are responsible for their daughter's death. I think the Boulder District Attorney's office and the Grand Jury are to be commended for not charging the Ramseys with a crime they could not prove. Whether this book will help their public image is another matter.

Someone saw me reading this book and couldn't believe that I had actually paid money for it. When I explained that it told another side to the story, that person rolled his eyes and said, "So now you think they're innocent?" How sad that the media has convicted these people without the benefit of a trial. Even the grand jury refused to bring them to trial citing 'lack of evidence.' Our guarantee of being innocent until proven guilty is quickly going by the wayside. More than anything, I was appalled at the conduct of the Boulder Police Dept. Our television stations come from Denver and I recall very clearly the "leaks" and the BPD's battles with the D.A.'s office as well as the information released that would later be proven inaccurate. What if this had been a top-notch murder investigation instead of the fiasco that it became? I salute the family and friends who stood by the Ramsey's and did not sell their souls to the tabloids. The book explained a great deal although some questions still remain. The ransom note is really a weird piece to this puzzle. Without that, I doubt the parents would ever have been accused. I'm not satisfied with any explanations of the note. Also, I was hoping that the information that Burke's voice was actually heard in the background on the 911 call that Patsy initially made (after it had been sent off to some labratory)would be addressed in the book, but it was not. The Ramsey's did a good job of explaining some of their actions that seemed inappropriate at the time. I wonder how many of us could have endured what they had to endure for as long as they did. If your mind is made up, you probably won't enjoy this book at all. But if you read it with an open mind, you might be able to say, "What if they've been innocent all along?"

The Ramsey's book is well-written and informative. One spurious accusation after another is addressed in a factual and convincing way. Yet, in my opinion that is not where the power of the book lies. It lies in the Ramsey's willingness to share their feelings and their experience in a way that rings true to the heart of every parent who has lost a child, and I am such a parent. Not all of us who have lost young ones, however, have had them murdered while we lay sleeping in the same house. Though we've not experienced anything like John's torment over the fact that he had been unable to protect his precious JonBenet, we can empathize deeply. As Patsy shares her fear ... her terror ... her panic, a feeling of intense compassion arises in the reader, and we cannot help but say, "There but by the grace of God go I." Any of us could lose our children to the murderer who still walks our streets; any of us could be the victims of an inept police force that failed to recognize its need for help and used "leaks" to malign our character. How many of us, however, could endure what the Ramsey's have endured over the past decade - Beth's death, Patsy's cancer, JonBenet's murder, loss of reputation, loss of financial security - and still struggle to come out on the other side? How many of us would have the heart to write a book in which we bare our pain, defend ourselves from the injustices that have been perpetrated against us, and call others to be accountable for their incompetence and cruelty ... without a trace of bitterness? There is disillusionment, yes; profound grief, yes; fear, yes. There is a clear attempt to hold all of us accountable for whatever part we have played in this drama, whether it be armchair observer or police chief, but there is not bitterness. Through the pages of their book, the Ramsey's have shown themselves to be worthy role models, the hope of our society.

Please if you care anything about the death of this little girl do not believe anything jameson245 will ever say. This book doesn't tell the whole story of the way the death of this little girl was covered up.

This book is more about the press and the police than it is about JonBenet Ramsey

I thought that Death of a Little Princess was a little tricky, but in a way it was also a good book to read. A couple chapters in the book were about the investigators talking. It was tricky to understand what they were talking about at times. Sometimes the investigators just rambled on about things that got confusing at times. In a way the book was good. The author, Carlton Smith, talked a little about the lives of JonBenet, John, and Patsy. In the book it talked about the many suspects they have. I thought that the author should've said more about her life. He should've told about her life instead of only talking about the murder that was commited.

Charlie Greene's mother is the prime suspect in the murder of her next door neighbor, and there are more murders to follow. The actual storyline wasn't very captivating, but the big cast of characters kept your brain turning. The major downside to this book was that this was Charlie's first visit home to Boulder since she left sixteen years ago as a pregnant teen. The mystery of who fathered Charlie's daughter, Libby, almost took top billing over what was supposed to be the actual mystery. The book was okay--it makes for a light weekend read.