Before a book is released, publishers send advance copies of it to reviewers to read. The reviewers need time to read a book and comment on it before it actually appears in bookstores for sale. Some of the most important reviews are printed in trade publications such as Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, or The Library Journal.
These reviews are important because book sellers often use them to gauge when a “hot” title might be coming their way. Hollywood agents also watch those publications for reviews of promising books that might be made into movies.
Which is why I was thrilled when Publishers Weekly and Kirkus Reviews both gave my new book, The Serial Killer Whisperer, positive reviews this past week. My book will not be available until January 10, 2012.
Here is what Kirkus had to say about it.
As a young Texan, Tony Ciaglia enjoyed a rambunctious childhood, but a near-fatal jet-ski accident left him comatose at 15. Suffering from brain damage, he was prone to angry rages, depression and obsessions, such as one with an Internet site advertising serial killer “murderabilia.”
After intensive research and with his therapist’s blessing, Ciaglia mailed 41 introductory letters to—and received responses from—a laundry list of killers, including “Cross Country Killer” Glen Rogers, who meticulously described the details of his first murder. Regular communication emerged from the best of the worst: child rapist and cannibal Arthur Shawcross, neurotic sexual sadist David Alan Gore and Joseph Metheny, a career murderer who unremorsefully “enjoyed” the butchering and necrophilic molestation of women.
Investigative journalist Earley (Comrade J, 2008, etc.) documents the Ciaglia’s intensive interplay with a brilliant combination of scrutiny and unobtrusive narration, allowing the verbatim letters to do the book’s grisly spadework.
The letters incrementally ramp up to reveal the killers’ shockingly intimate secrets, including stories of their traumatic childhoods, admitted details on abandoned case files, specific directions to shallow graves and the grotesquely detailed procedurals of a kill. Ciaglia’s involvement with these killers, many of whom were sympathetic to his plight, escalated to penitentiary visits, the attempted exhumation of unrecovered remains and, finally, assistance with police investigators working on cold cases.
Definitely not for the faint of heart, this as a macabre, stomach-turning glimpse at true crime’s most evil villains.
About the author:
Congrats and best of luck with it.
Wow… I really enjoyed this book, although I cannot say why. Very unusual and well written. I will be looking for any further clues to the “cabin” in Alaska and or the “trophies” in Vero Beach.
Although, I cannot fathom what these Parents of Missing Children feel, I can appreciate Tony helping find out what happened to thier children, if only in one case.
I am totally freaked out by his depth of friendship w/his “Pen Pals” and can only assume his family must of been Desperate for him to have a “reason to function” each day. Although, I admire the Strength of this family.
No need to answer back. I normally do not read True Crime, my Librarian must have suggested this or the title grabbed my sense of dry humor. However, I could not put it down and will investigate other books you have written.
Thank-You,
Ocala, Fla.