Review: The Stranger Beside Me by Ann Rule

I have a friend who I first bonded with over our shared interest in

The Stranger Beside Me by Ann Rule

psychopaths.
          My interest is, thank god, an academic one, a writer's curiosity about the extremes of human behaviour. My friend, poor woman, married a psychopath and has first hand experience of the dedicated selfishness that a human being can be capable of, the blind inability to appreciate that anyone except them has any right to an opinion, a life or free will.
          But when it comes to psycho-spotting, author and journalist Ann Rule can perhaps claim the prize.
          As a journalist, she often handled crime reports, spent a lot of time in police stations talking to detectives and made several friends on the force.

Ann Rule, from her Amazon page

          In her 40s, she volunteered to man phones on a suicide help-line, and shared her regular night-shift with a psychology student named Ted. She thought him a lovely young man and they became good friends, despite the age-gap of ten years. He was so caring towards the callers and at the end of her shift, he always walked her to her car, to make sure she was safe - whereas her detective friends, when she left their offices late at night, would say, "We'll watch from the window and if anyone mugs you, we'll phone 911."

     This little anecdote perhaps highlights something about psychopaths (and human nature.) Rule's detective friends were showing genuine concern and covering it with a joke. They probably knew there was little risk to her and, as ordinary human beings with many other concerns, they said goodbye and got on with their lives and jobs.
          'Ted', on the other hand, was acting a role, performing the character of 'lovely young man and caring friend.' It was convincing so long as it was never tested. One difference between someone telling the truth and a liar is that the truth-teller has 'an expectation of belief' because they know that they're telling the truth and therefore don't think they need bother to be meticulously convincing. They give a rough account, forget details - or assume that their genuine affection is apparent and needs no display.
          Liars know themselves to be lying and therefore go several extra miles in order to convince. Their stories are neatly in order, with lots of irrelevant detail to 'hide the lie among truths.' When it comes to relationships, their false affection is constantly voiced,  rehearsed and displayed. And takes many in.  Alas, research has shown that, though most of us think we can tell when someone is lying, we're actually very bad at it.

          Rule was no longer working with Ted, but was still in touch

Seattle, wikimedia

with him, when young women started disappearing from the Greater Seattle area. Rule was soon aware, from her friends in the Police, that they feared they were dealing with a serial killer. When suspicion fell on Ann Rule's friend, Ted, she thought it was obviously a routine enquiry or a mistake...
          But it wasn't. Ann's friend was Ted Bundy, and she found herself in the middle of the crime story that would define her career. For ever after she would be, the woman who worked beside Ted Bundy.

          Bundy abducted, terrified, raped and murdered many women, possibly more than a hundred. Like most serial killers, he probably started much earlier than the crimes he was charged with. Rule's research turned up the fact that, when Bundy was 15, a young girl, a child, was abducted from her home and murdered. The killer was never found. Bundy lived a few doors away, and knew the child. He never admitted to that killing - but he never admitted to anything unless there was an advantage for him.
          He was eventually arrested in Seattle, but insisted on representing himself, which gave him the right to make trips to the library to look at law books. While swearing complete innocence and mistaken arrest, he used a library trip to escape.

          He ran to Florida, but couldn't give up his hobby. Or was killing his addiction, his crutch? Within a week of arriving in Florida, he attacked several women in one night, killing three and leaving others badly injured.

Florida Capitol, wikimedia

          Bundy found Florida less careless and forgiving than the North-West. They sentenced him to death and placed him in a far  more secure prison. Another escape attempt was thwarted and after that he was kept in chains. Yes, he could have his trips to the law library - in chains.
          Now you would think that, to him, life was cheap. He had, after all, killed an unknown number of women for fun. Their lives and everything and everyone their lives had encompassed, had been as disposable, to him, as a condom. So what was a little matter of a death sentence, when life is so unimportant?
          But only other people's lives were unimportant to Bundy. He tried every possible delaying tactic, trick and appeal to preserve his own life. He also attempted to use the names of the women he'd murdered, and the sites where he'd dumped their bodies, as bargaining tools. Grant him another appeal, let him live a little longer, and he might give up a few more identities and a few more remains for burial.

          Bundy was an exemplary serial killer in that he demonstrates just how loathsome a nasty piece of work a human being can be - and yet he had a little fan club of female fools who were besotted with him. One even married him and had his child.
          If the psychology of serial killers is strange, the psychology of their groupies defeats me.

         If you share my interest in the minds of psychopaths, then Rule's book is of great interest. It sprawls a little, because she has updated it regularly over more than twenty years.
          Besides knowing the loathsome Bundy personally, and having access to him in jail, she has also interviewed many of the people he bereaved, which throws up some intriguing stories.
          The husband of one murdered woman was away on business on the day she was abducted. He told Rule that, in his distant hotel room, late on that day, he clearly heard his wife's voice say, "Help."
          Bundy's final killing spree took place in a university dormitory. He broke in, and lay in wait in darkened corridors. Rule interviewed a couple of survivors who survived because, as they told Rule, they became seized by what seemed, at the time, an inexplicable fear. One girl was in a bathroom and only had to step across the dark corridor to her bedroom, but found herself completely unable, for fear, to open the door. She had no idea why. She had no idea, consciously at least,  that Bundy was murdering her fellow students a little way down the corridor. This almost psychic awareness of danger reminds me of another book I've reviewed - Gavin de Becker's Gift of Fear.
         The Stranger Beside Me is often a grim read, but it's an informative one.

Defending The Villain

          I’ve been reading reviews of my book, The Sterkarm Handshake on Goodreads.  Most of them are good – four and five star.  People say how much they enjoyed the book, and I heartily thank people for taking the time and trouble to post a review – even though they may have done it for fellow readers rather than me.

          However, I was struck by how many of the reviews – even the positive ones – took issue with the character of my villain, the Company Executive Officer, James Windsor.

          He’s called a ‘one-dimensional character’ and ‘a pantomime villain’.  He even, commenters say, in shocked tones, makes fun of the heroine’s size.

          This puzzles me.  Early reviews of the book said much the same thing; and here are later readers saying it.  Could I have got it so wrong?

          I don't think I did.

          Now I’m fully aware that any writer arguing against adverse comments is going to look like an egoist who can’t take criticism.

          But I’m going to do it anyway.  I’ve been publishing since I was 16.  I’ve been taking criticism, constructive and destructive, on the chin for the whole of my adult life.

          I don’t quarrel with those who say that the book is too violent, or that the heroine is irritating, or even that it’s boring.  I’ve said the same things of books by other writers, even of books by writers whose other works I’ve loved, so I’m neither surprised nor dismayed that some people dislike some of my books.  I had my reasons for writing it the way I did; but other people would have made different choices, and dislike those I made. Fair enough.

         The comments on James Windsor puzzle me, though.  When I write, I obviously create scenes, plots and characters that seem, to me, convincing – since if they don’t convince me, it’s foolish to hope they’ll convince readers.  I characterised Windsor as I did because it’s my observation that there are people like him abroad in this unhappy world.  Not everyone, not even every CEO – but some.

          I’m quite glad to think that so many of my readers seem never to have met a James Windsor, but I’m puzzled too.  They’ve never met a bully?  Really?

          And yet bullying at work is commonplace.  (Nor is it new: I was talking about this with my aunt, and she told me that she left her first job, 64 years ago, because her boss bullied her so much.)

          James Windsor has financial power, and power over employees, and he enjoys using it.  He gets a kick when people have no choice but to obey him.  It makes him feel better about himself – why wouldn’t it?  It proves his success as much as his car, his home, his expensive suits.

          That he’s one-dimensional may be true to the extent that, in the books, we see him only with subordinates – or people he thinks should be his subordinates, such as the Sterkarms.  (But he has no hold over the Sterkarms, and they don’t give a spit for him.)

          I also think it’s fair to say that Windsor is good at his job, intelligent, witty and, quite often, right.  He makes the mistake made by many ‘civilised’ men before him, of underestimating the ‘uncivilised’, but he’s far from stupid.  He’s just not benevolent.  Take a look round the world and you’ll see plenty of intelligent but malevolent people.

          With his equals or superiors Windsor would be charming – well-mannered, witty, friendly, considerate.  With equals, he has a reputation to sustain, and from superiors he has something to gain.  I’m told that my great-grandfather was like this.  Among workmates and pub-friends, towards strangers and such superiors as policemen and bosses, he was ‘a great laugh’: generous, witty, charming.

          At home, he made no effort to charm. He terrorised his wife and children, kicking one of his sons senseless for defending a sister, and deafening a daughter by hitting her on the ear with a seven-pound lump hammer.  (He was a blacksmith, and ordered his daughter to hold a chisel while he hit it with said hammer.  She annoyed him by flinching, and he hit her with what he had to hand – the hammer.)  But that night, in the pub, he was ‘a great laugh’.  Does this seem OTT, too melodramatic? - But it's true, and very similar scenes are being enacted on the day you read this, somewhere near you.

          A friend in publishing once told me of a writer she was friendly with.  She’d known him for years and they’d always got on well when they met at launches and lunches.  Then, due to the last recession but one, my friend was given notice.  Shortly after, she met the writer again.  They hugged and kissed, and he asked for her news.

          She said she’d lost her job, and felt rather depressed, since she couldn’t imagine finding another, given her age and the state of the industry.

          The writer replied, “Oh, you’re no use to me any more, then, are you?” – turned his back and walked away, leaving her gobsmacked and speechless.

          Very James Windsor. He, the writer, and my great-grandfather were narcissists.  They aren't in short supply, and they aren't always serial-killers.  I think they're quite often in positions of authority, both because they want to be, and because their unswerving self-interest helps them to get there.

          As for Windsor’s insulting remarks to my hefty heroine – have my readers really not met people like this?  Really?

          While writing Handshake, I met a woman who worked for an executive, and asked her about her job and boss.  She told me, rolling her eyes, that he always addressed her as ‘Gorgeous,’ even calling her this in front of others.

Now, this would be patronising and offensive enough, but it went further.  My informant, though professionally impressive and very well groomed, was fully aware that not many would seriously call her ‘gorgeous’.  Hence the rolling eyes.  Every time he called her that, especially in front of others, it was a put-down.

          But how could she complain?  She had a well paid job which otherwise suited her well, which she might lose if she complained.  Even if you don’t mind losing your job, how can you complain that your boss calls you ‘gorgeous’?  But she and everyone who heard it knew that it was a sneer.

          Why did her boss sneer at her on a daily basis?  Because he could.  He enjoyed it.

          It was this meeting which nerved me to have Windsor speak to Andrea as he does.  At one point he gives her expensive chocolates saying, “I’m sure you’ll know what to do with them.”

          Andrea reflects that Windsor’s gifts are payment for the right to insult people.  This is the politics of gift-giving.  At its most benign, it’s an affirmation of friendship – at its less benign, it’s manipulative power-play.  It’s hard to quarrel with someone who gives you expensive gifts – and some use that to get away with bad behaviour.

          It’s these experiences, and my own, which lie behind James Windsor.  I don’t think, unfortunately, that he’s unrealistic or pantomimic at all.

          But I’d be interested to hear your thoughts.  I will take them on the chin.