Heart Full of Lies: A True Story of Desire and Death

Rating:
Summary: Good Airplane Read
Review: I bought this book at the airport in Sacramento and it was the perfect read for a long flight---quick and easy, suspenseful, etc. However, compared to some of Rule's other books, there are some serious flaws with this one. Namely, the lack of a legitimate psychiatric evaluation to support her claims that Liysa is histrionic, a sociopath, etc. I found that up until she murders her husband, Liysa appears simply self-centered and overly dramatic---not necessarily a sociopathic manipulator. In fact, I found that the only really unusual behavior she exhibited was her bout of "amnesia" and frankly I had to wonder about this guy and his mother that they would go along with that as long as they did!

It also bothers me that Rule dismisses Liysa's claims of abuse (both domestic and childhood)so easily. Although I am sure there are general characteristics that many abuse victims might share, there are exceptions to all of these.

Finally, some of Rule's comments are quite sexist. She describes Liysa's desire to have sex every day as a sexual compulsion. I don't know that daily sex qualifies as a "compulsion" and I wonder if a man expressed this same desire if it would be viewed in the same manner.





Rating:
Summary: Heart Full of Lies
Review: I found the book both intriguing and disturbing in that a woman could manipulate so many people in her life and think she could get away with it. I feel the author layed out the case superbly and that when she was finished with her details of the case there was only one conclusion one could establish. I thought it was well written and a good read. It kept me turning the pages way into the night.

Rating:
Summary: Outstanding
Review: Another winner from Ann Rule. The ultimate manipulative wife that kills her husband. Using (imagined, made-up) abuse as her excuse! Makes you wonder how many more women are out there like Liysa Northon...scary.

Rating:
Summary: A fair portrait of a killer
Review: Throughout the years since Ann Rule's first blockbuster, THE STRANGER BESIDE ME, I have been pleased to note that she has not stooped to cheap sensationalism to sell books. On the contrary, driven by the desire to tell the stories of some of humankind's most heartless criminals, she doggedly researches her subject and, in the end, presents a fair portrait of a killer.

In this particular case, Ms. Rule dances around the subject of domestic abuse without judging whether it existed here. Liysa DeWitt Northon claimed she was a victim of constant abuse from her husband, Chris. His friends and neighbors vehemently declaimed the idea as absurd. Since he is dead --- at Liysa's hand --- and she refused interviews with the author, the truth remains Liysa's secret.

HEART FULL OF LIES chronicles Liysa Northon's marriages, divorces, and ultimate slaying of her third husband. She always came out of a marriage financially better than she went into it. Her first and second husbands quietly acceded to her bullying demands, a tactic that she found worked well to her advantage. But she ran into a wall when it came time to get rid of her third husband. Chris could not face losing contact with Bjorn, the child Liysa cajoled him into creating with her. His deep love for his son surprised even him in its ferocity, and his apparent intractability may have been what cost him his life. Had he given Liysa an easy out, would she have let him live? We will never know now.

Instead, it seems that this highly intelligent and very capable woman embarked on a campaign to impugn her husband's reputation almost from the very start. Claiming that he choked her in a drunken rage, hit her in a drug-induced haze, and terrorized her at every turn, she convinced many of her friends that Chris was a monster and that her once ideal marriage was now a nightmare. In addition, her insatiable appetite for real estate --- and Chris's refusal to feed it --- drove her to look for someone else who would. While she squeezed everything out of Chris that she could, she was methodically engaged in a plan to get him out of her life. But she hit a snag. As his ex-wife, she would lose the perks that came with being a pilot's wife. And she knew, as his widow, that she would lose nothing. She wanted it all. What she got, in the end, was prison.

Having been on the fringes firsthand of a murder case that Ann Rule wrote about, I can attest to her accurate reporting, coupled with a kindhearted compassion for the victims and the families whose lives are forever disrupted. HEART FULL OF LIES proves that Ms. Rule is still capable of writing blockbusters.

--- Reviewed by Kate Ayers

Rating:
Summary: Writing is not up to Ann's usual standards
Review: I must admit that while reading this book, I couldn't help observing that the writing is not up to par. It's repetitive, disjointed, and the sentence structure sometimes had me reading back over to catch her meaning.
That being said, I still enjoyed this book. The story of Liysa DeWitt as told by Ann Rule is horribly fascinating. My heart goes out to the parents, sisters, and other relatives of Chris Northon, and especially to little Bjorn Northon whose "mydad" was taken so cruelly - evilly - from him by his own mother.
Liysa undoubtedly should have received a life sentence, seeing as the death penalty wasn't an option. The plea bargain, reducing her sentence to 150 months, made my hair stand on end. The evidence indicates that in the process of murdering her husband, Liysa drugged him, used a taser gun on him, tried to drown him, and then shot him through the temple. Good Lord! Chris likely would have died from the drug overdose alone! Can you say "Overkill"?? Twelve and a half years is a devastatingly low sentence for such a dangerous woman. She'll be out of prison at the age of 55 and will no doubt inflict much influence over her sons at that time. I can only imagine the havoc she'll wreak in their young lives, even if she thinks she's acting out of "love." (I personally believe she doesn't know what healthy motherly love is. The mention of her breast feeding until her first son was five years old, and still in the process of doing so with the younger son, not quite four, at the time of the murder seems to me a little over the top. Apologies to the La Leche gals.) She'll also likely go on to insinuate herself into the lives of unsuspecting people at that time, and if she killed once with no apparent conscience, who's to say she won't do it again? All I can say is, if you're a guy who will be middleaged in approximately ten years from now, don't get involved with any women named "Liysa"!
It's Ms Rule's opinion that Liysa suffers from personality disorders - antisocial, histrionic, and bipolar. I don't know whether personality disorders are hereditary, but I'd bet that her father and brother may also have them considering their illogical defence of her, the fact that they were either aware of what she was planning to do - or had done - and denial of what the evidence has shown. Can't they be charged with something? Removing evidence...aiding and abetting. Anything at all?? I'm surprised if what they did was legal.
Ann, keep up the good work. But maybe do a little more polishing of the final product before publication. You have a way of burrowing to the inner core of an evil person and revealing the horror inside.