Smoke, Mirrors, and Murder: And Other True Cases

Pocket, 2007. Very Good. Bestseller Rule looks at marriages gone bad in her latest volume of true-cr ime case files. Stories include "The Minister's Wife," about a woman convic ted of shooting her husband in 2006, and "The Painter's Wife," an amazing t ale of two strangers kidnapped by a hardened criminal. The bulk of the book is taken up by "The Deputy's Wife," the sad tale of a once-promising young police officer, Bill Jensen, who eventually took out a contract on his own family. It's a good yarn, full of horrifying twists, but at 150 pages can get repetitive. For those not used to it, Rule's fondness for potboiler pro se-"Their marriage had spun like a colorful top...Now as it wound down slow er and slower, Sue could see the pattern of lies"-can also annoy. Many of t he seven cases here are gruesome but unmemorable, perhaps the inevitable re sult of Rule's prodigious output.