Rating: 
Summary: Excellent.
Review: This is a wonderful book!! And kinda scary..
Rating:
Summary: Wow!
Review: This is one of the most compelling books I've read in a long time
Rating: 
Summary: liar,liar
Review: True crime writer Edward Humes (Mississippi Mud 1994, et al) takes apart the criminal justice system in Bakersfield, California and Kern County. The main story is about Pat Dunn, convicted in 1993 of murdering his wife for her money. The evidence was slight and relied heavily on a heroin addict's testimony, a career criminal who had gotten a deal to testify. Humes makes a good case for Dunn's innocence.Humes also devotes some serious space to some notorious child molestation/satanic abuse cases prosecuted in Kern County during the eighties and nineties. It's the Little Rascals and McMartin all over again, except worse and prior. There's the usual brainwashing of the children by social workers to get them to tell horrific tales, and a criminal justice system out to satisfy the lust of the mob at any cost. This is very readable and Humes pulls no punches when it comes to going after the prosecutors. It's an irony of our criminal justice system that sometimes in places like this there's a public so quick to convict that they end up sending innocent people to jail, while in other places-I'm thinking of Houston, Texas and the case of Cullen Davis (see Final Justice: The True Story of the Richest Man Ever Tried for Murder (1993) by Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith) and of Los Angeles with you know who-we get juries that will not convict regardless of the evidence. Humes is doing the good people of Bakersfield a favor in this book, although I doubt if most of them realize it, because if the system gets too corrupt, the juries will eventually be like the jury that tried O.J.: they'll put the system on trial instead of the defendant and deliver a verdict against it. This is top drawer true crime written by one the best in the business. In his ability to involve the reader with the story, he's on a par with Ann Rule. In his desire to expose injustice, Humes is like "Sixty Minutes" turboed.
Rating:
Summary: Injustice in a California town
Review: True crime writer Edward Humes (Mississippi Mud 1994, et al) takes apart the criminal justice system in Bakersfield, California and Kern County. The main story is about Pat Dunn, convicted in 1993 of murdering his wife for her money. The evidence was slight and relied heavily on a heroin addict's testimony, a career criminal who had gotten a deal to testify. Humes makes a good case for Dunn's innocence. Humes also devotes some serious space to some notorious child molestation/satanic abuse cases prosecuted in Kern County during the eighties and nineties. It's the Little Rascals and McMartin all over again, except worse and prior. There's the usual brainwashing of the children by social workers to get them to tell horrific tales, and a criminal justice system out to satisfy the lust of the mob at any cost. This is very readable and Humes pulls no punches when it comes to going after the prosecutors. It's an irony of our criminal justice system that sometimes in places like this there's a public so quick to convict that they end up sending innocent people to jail, while in other places-I'm thinking of Houston, Texas and the case of Cullen Davis (see Final Justice: The True Story of the Richest Man Ever Tried for Murder (1993) by Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith) and of Los Angeles with you know who-we get juries that will not convict regardless of the evidence. Humes is doing the good people of Bakersfield a favor in this book, although I doubt if most of them realize it, because if the system gets too corrupt, the juries will eventually be like the jury that tried O.J.: they'll put the system on trial instead of the defendant and deliver a verdict against it. This is top drawer true crime written by one the best in the business. In his ability to involve the reader with the story, he's on a par with Ann Rule. In his desire to expose injustice, Humes is like "Sixty Minutes" turboed.
Rating: 
Summary: Poor Research = Sensationalistic Reading
Review: Whereas this book reads quite well it is perhaps better labeled as fiction. Having first hand knowledge of many of the described events, it sadly seems that selling books has become more important than factual accuracy. Local news reported tonight that a 100 page analysis of this book's factual inaccuracies will soon be released. That should make for an interesting counter-point.
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