Rating: 
Summary: A New Style of True Crime -
Review: Have you noticed how it is that when you mention the name "Andrea Yates" people's jaws go slack? Wait 'til you read this book. It is SO good. Not sensationalized at all. It doesn't have to be. The facts are sensational enough. The author, Suzanne O'Malley, has used interviews with Yates by various psychiatrists,interviews with her husband, mother and dozens of others as well as the court transcripts and letters from Andrea Yates herself to the author to tell the story. Apparently, O'Malley is the only reporter to have carried on a correspondence with Yates from her cell in prison. (Would love to read the entire letters and not just the exerpts in the book - wow!) What I like, is that the writer does not intrude on the subject - it tells itself seemingly effortlessly. Just every now and then, like one of the classic tragedies - which surely this is - she will very subtly point out something that is so ironic or just plain stupid that you have to laugh out loud. Thank goodness! Anyway, It's terrific. The killing of her children was and is, of course unspeakable" but the depth of her understanding combined with the sensitivity of Yates's portrait makes this an extraordinary book. Read it. You won't be sorry. Truth is, after all, stranger than fiction.
Rating:
Summary: A New Style of True Crime -
Review: Have you noticed how it is that when you mention the name "Andrea Yates" people's jaws go slack? Wait 'til you read this book. It is SO good. Not sensationalized at all. It doesn't have to be. The facts are sensational enough. The author, Suzanne O'Malley, has used interviews with Yates by various psychiatrists,interviews with her husband, mother and dozens of others as well as the court transcripts and letters from Andrea Yates herself to the author to tell the story. Apparently, O'Malley is the only reporter to have carried on a correspondence with Yates from her cell in prison. (Would love to read the entire letters and not just the exerpts in the book - wow!) What I like, is that the writer does not intrude on the subject - it tells itself seemingly effortlessly. Just every now and then, like one of the classic tragedies - which surely this is - she will very subtly point out something that is so ironic or just plain stupid that you have to laugh out loud. Thank goodness! Anyway, It's terrific. The killing of her children was and is, of course unspeakable" but the depth of her understanding combined with the sensitivity of Yates's portrait makes this an extraordinary book. Read it. You won't be sorry. Truth is, after all, stranger than fiction.
Rating: 
Summary: For the information...
Review: I gave the book four stars because of the information packed into it, and the fact that it reveals a lot about the trial and how Andrea got screwed over by the prosecution (*a big part of the prosecution's case was based on an Law and Order episode that never existed--they said that Andrea watched this episode, about a mentally ill woman who kills her kids, and got ideas from it). However, it is boring and not a quick read at all. Suzy Spencer's "Breaking Point" is an easier read, but is not as thorough. This one gives more details as to how and why the kids were killed, while the other has a lot more on the previous life of the Yates' family. Both have their strong points. Overall, I would probably recommend Breaking Point. Most of the 'extra' stuff this one provides can be found on CNN. And, unfortunately, there are no pictures in this novel. Mary isn't even shown on the cover, so if you're relying solely on this novel, it's hard to picture her. She, and brothers Noah, John, Luke and Paul were beautiful children. This book could've been better had it included some pictures, simply to give the readers some illustration.
Rating: 
Summary: behind the scene
Review: I liked hearing about the people such as the police dispatcher, the first officer on scene-David Knapp. We hear how News photographer John Treadgold was the first on the scene. Author does a great job of showing the people who were in the background and not just the big lawyers which most crime/court dramas take up all the print.
Rating:
Summary: Best book written on the Yates case so far
Review: I stated that this was the best book written on the Yates case so far. It is, but bear in mind that is not saying a lot given the material that has been published so far. While O'Malley makes a strong case that Andrea Yates was suffering from severe mental illness and would have been better served by being sentenced to a mental hospital, I personally felt that Ms. O'Malley had become too personally attached to this case and some of the key players, esp. Rusty Yates. As a result, it is very difficult to wade through the author's bias and get a clear understanding of the events that lead up to this tragedy. For instance, very little is said about the Yateses' decision to have a 5th child even after they had been warned by Andrea's doctor that such a decision would almost certainly "guarantee future psychotic depression." Furthermore, the author fails to point out the contradictions in Rusty (and Andrea's) philosophy to have as many children as "nature intended." (i.e, The couple lived together almost a year before they married and Andrea was on the pill during that time.) Also, Rusty claims that he is not a doctor and thought all psychiatrists were essentially the same, yet he also KNEW that Andrea's last doctor, Dr. Mohammad Saeed (who, IMO, became a scapegoat of sorts for both the Yates and the Kennedy families),should have given her the drug Haldol. O'Malley never bothers to point these out, yet strangely enough, she takes it upon herself to inform the reader that when she met with Dr. Saeed for her first and only appointment, she noticed that his BWM "could have used a wash." It was comments like that which made me wonder just what Ms. O'Mallery was trying to accomplish in this book. Lastly, I would have liked to hear more from the Kennedy family who since the trial, have levelled many criticism against their son-in-law and what they see as his inablity to acknowledge that his wife was as bad off as she was until it was too late.
Rating:
Summary: Great Book
Review: Psychology in general has always been interesting to me. I am getting my minor in Psychology currently. I was shocked and sad by the terrible, horrific story of the Yates children. This book was impossible to put down. I read the entire book in a day. The author does a wonderful job of telling the story and offering insights not all people are willing or capable of seeing. I definitely recommend this book to anyone who wants a better understanding of the case and the disturbing story. It does a wonderful job of making Mrs. Yates seem human and terribly, terribly let down by the psychological health system in the United States.
Rating: 
Summary: Read this ONLY If You Want To Get Angry
Review: Self-serving tripe by an author who is out to proclaim herself as a savior to this murderer. She'll let you know how very grateful Yates' defense lawyers were to her, her little "test" performed on a Yates' psychiatrist (which proved nothing), and her conjecture that the blame should lie, not on the murderer, but rather other members of the family and friends. Aside from her own proclamations of heroism, this author is most interested in getting readers to buy into the fact that Yates should have been found innocent by reason of insanity, and at most should have been confined to a mental institution instead of a jail. Yates knew exactly what she was doing and planned it out to precisely coincide with the small time frame she had to work with between the time her husband left for work, and her mother-in-law arrived. After she carefully drowned each one of her 5 children (the 7 year old while the 2 year old was already dead in the tub - can you imagine the terror he went through?), she calmly informed the police. To blame all of this (any of it!) on post-partum depression, anxiety, or any other mood disorder is ludicrous. Aside from some horrendous serial killers such as Dahlmer, Bundy, and Gacy, I can't think of anyone who deserved the death penalty more than this brutal, sadistic killer of innocent, little children.
Rating: 
Summary: Huntress on the prowl!
Review: Suzanne O'Malley is a huntress on the prowl, out to prove that everybody connected with the Andrea Yates case was incompetent. I found the book to be extremely disjointed and tedious. O'Malley pads the book with psychiatric interviews that go nowhere. She even resorts to jury selection to fill up pages. There is one new tidbit, specifically that Andrea Yates was bi-polar before she got married and that her pregnancies pushed her over the edge, but that would be material for a magazine article, not a 262-page book.
O'Malley maintains that Andrea Yates was misdiagnosed and that one psychiatrist especially, Mohmammed Saed, was especially delinquent. Yates tried to commit suicide twice before she drowned her children and she was at one time committed to Devereaux Texas Treatment Network, where Saed was on staff. He prescribed several anti-depressants rather than Haldol which had worked for Yates in the past and never seemed to bother to see his patient. The anti-depressants may have exacerbated her problem. There is one especially funny sequence where O'Malley plays investigative reporter, making an appointment with Saed and complaining about not being able to get right down to work as a journalist, suggesting that she may have ADHD. He prescribes Wellbutrin.
At first it appears O'Malley will focus on Michael Woroniecki, an itinerant preacher the Yates were involved with. Yates had contended that she drowned the children to save them from Satan, that because they were so young and innocent they would go to Heaven. She, Satan, would be annihilated. O'Malley infers Woroniecki was partially responsible. He told Andrea that she was a bad mother and that she was going to hell, supposedly because she let them watch cartoons and would not spank them when they were naughty. This guy is the most interesting character in the book but, alas, O'Malley couldn't get him to agree to an interview.
The huntress returns when the psychiatrist for the prosecution contends that Yates was imitating a segment from the television program, Law and Order, during which a woman drowns her children in a bathtub. O'Malley, a former scripter for the show, checks it out, learning that there was no such program. But, this being Texas, the judge refuses to declare a mistrial. O'Malley takes credit anyway, claiming that if it had not been for her sleuthing Yates would have got the death penalty.
Overall this book reads like one of those quickie exposes that come out after a headline disaster, only those are usually written in two weeks. It took O'Malley two years to write this one.
Rating:
Summary: strong look at the psychological issues of mental illness
Review: The Andrea Yates's murders of her five children and the subsequent trial are graphically described by Suzanne O'Malley, a reporter who followed the case for TV and magazines. Not fascinating in any sense as Ms. O'Malley does not hold back in her details and her interviews. Most readers will struggle to get past the explicit details of a mother drowning her children. However, what makes this true crime story that sounds more like a horror novel remain above the sensationalism is that the author makes the key players seem real and human. Andrea Yates does not come across as a maniacal psychopathic monster, but instead someone suffering from mental illness, court ruling on competence aside. Not easy to read due to the horror of the crimes, Ms. O'Malley makes the case as stated by a neurologist that Ms. Yates "fit the definition of legal insanity-even in Texas." This strong look at the psychological issues of mental illness that makes justice so difficult to insure provides more than a ghastly look at perhaps the most hideous personal crime of the decade. Harriet Klausner
Rating:
Summary: The Mistreatment and trial of Andrea Yates
Review: The recent Court decision to over-turn the conviction of Andrea Yates was based in part on the evidence presented in this well-researched book on the "unspeakable" crime. Ms. O'Malley caught a number of mistakes in the way Yates was treated and the way her case was presented, but uncovering the erroneous testimony of the prosecution's expert witness, Dr. Park Dietz, was the central factor in discrediting the state's case against Andrea Yates. By virtue of her careful reporting and analysis, Ms. O'Malley managed, not simply to observe the trial process, but to become one of the most powerful participants in it. It becomes clear in this book that the psychiatric treatment of Yates is one of trial and error, if not downright neglect. Even reading the transcript of the Dietz interview is enough to convince one that Ms. Yates, whatever she may have known about right from wrong under the McNaughton doctrine, was not in control. She never doubted her actions were illegal, and she seemed convinced that they morally wrong; yet, at the same time, and in a way that makes her case for insanity that much more provocative -- she seemed convinced that she would be judged morally wrong for not drowning them, or otherwise ending their lives. She had talked herself into a tragic corner -- herself inevitably damned, she opted to save her children from the certain damnation that awaited them if, in her warped view, she did not act. No one denies that Ms. Yates suffered from mental illness prior to and at the time of her act. But the depth seemed to elude a number of people. The endless attempts to get Andrea to specify her thoughts at specific points in time for the purpose of the trial record would be risible but for the fact they were real. When Dr. Dietz asked her, "What were you wearing at the time of the drownings?" She responded, "clothes." She was so hopelessly operating at a cognitive level that simply didn't fulfill the requirements of an advarsarial system -- and yet she was there, having been declared sufficiently sane to stand trial. The decision allowing her to so stand was, in effect, the second tragedy.
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