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theanitaalvarez 's review for:
Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders
by Vincent Bugliosi
4 stars. A good, interesting read (and I don’t mean it only because of the murders, I swear).
November 23, 2012. A sect in Colliguay, Chile, kills a newborn baby (son of a couple of the sect’s members) in a ritual that was supposed to stop the end of the world.
April 2007, the body of a deceased woman was found in the premises belonging to a community (a nicer way to say ‘sect’) in Pirque, near Santiago de Chile. She died because she didn’t have the necessary medical care after giving birth to a girl, two months before.
Both sects presented leaders that manipulated people into following their beliefs, even if they endangered them and their loved ones. Pretty much the same that Manson did back in the 60’s. Maybe the ones here didn’t commit an unknown number of murders, but who knows what could be the next step?
I think that’s why this book spooked me so much. And it wasn’t even because of the murders (which were horrible to begin with), but because of the power Charles Manson held over the people in his sect. Just thinking that there are people who can order others to commit these atrocities is enough to give me the creeps. In other books, I can say that the events are just fiction, but in this one, everything that happens is very true. Which makes the whole affair even more horrible.
Literary speaking, another great thing about this book is the pacing. It is quite long and the trials are described with lots of details, but it doesn’t get boring at any point. Or at least it didn’t bore me (I wonder what does it say about me?), the little hints to what was going to happen later on the trial and the foreshadowing by Bugliosi (writing some time after the whole affair, of course he knew what was going to happen with all of them), made me want to keep on reading.
The book is chiefly based on the recordings of the trial (which Bugliosi himself says is massive), the reports of the police for the first description of the murders, and hundreds of interviews with the people involved. It is made very clear that Bugliosi himself was very much involved in the whole process. And his explanations on legal terms were very helpful for someone like, who doesn’t have any legal experience.
All this made this book very easy to read, which is always a plus when we’re dealing with non-fiction books. Sometimes you get way too much hard facts and evidence, but in this case there was clearly an effort to show that the people that were involved in the trial and appeared in the news all over the US were people indeed. They weren’t characters, or mere figures in this drama. They all had lives that were destroyed because of Manson’s crimes. Bugliosi made also a good picture of the legal system in California, and how the proceeding went that time.
It was interesting and I learnt a lot more than I expected, so that's a good point on a non-fiction book.
November 23, 2012. A sect in Colliguay, Chile, kills a newborn baby (son of a couple of the sect’s members) in a ritual that was supposed to stop the end of the world.
April 2007, the body of a deceased woman was found in the premises belonging to a community (a nicer way to say ‘sect’) in Pirque, near Santiago de Chile. She died because she didn’t have the necessary medical care after giving birth to a girl, two months before.
Both sects presented leaders that manipulated people into following their beliefs, even if they endangered them and their loved ones. Pretty much the same that Manson did back in the 60’s. Maybe the ones here didn’t commit an unknown number of murders, but who knows what could be the next step?
I think that’s why this book spooked me so much. And it wasn’t even because of the murders (which were horrible to begin with), but because of the power Charles Manson held over the people in his sect. Just thinking that there are people who can order others to commit these atrocities is enough to give me the creeps. In other books, I can say that the events are just fiction, but in this one, everything that happens is very true. Which makes the whole affair even more horrible.
Literary speaking, another great thing about this book is the pacing. It is quite long and the trials are described with lots of details, but it doesn’t get boring at any point. Or at least it didn’t bore me (I wonder what does it say about me?), the little hints to what was going to happen later on the trial and the foreshadowing by Bugliosi (writing some time after the whole affair, of course he knew what was going to happen with all of them), made me want to keep on reading.
The book is chiefly based on the recordings of the trial (which Bugliosi himself says is massive), the reports of the police for the first description of the murders, and hundreds of interviews with the people involved. It is made very clear that Bugliosi himself was very much involved in the whole process. And his explanations on legal terms were very helpful for someone like, who doesn’t have any legal experience.
All this made this book very easy to read, which is always a plus when we’re dealing with non-fiction books. Sometimes you get way too much hard facts and evidence, but in this case there was clearly an effort to show that the people that were involved in the trial and appeared in the news all over the US were people indeed. They weren’t characters, or mere figures in this drama. They all had lives that were destroyed because of Manson’s crimes. Bugliosi made also a good picture of the legal system in California, and how the proceeding went that time.
It was interesting and I learnt a lot more than I expected, so that's a good point on a non-fiction book.