Deadly Angel - Fred Rosen

Title: Deadly Angel: The Bizarre True Story of Alaska's Killer Stripper
Author: Fred Rosen
Genre: Non-fiction
Rating: 1.5/5
# pages: 223
Date read: June, 2009

Deadly Angel is a true-crime story about Alaska's "black widow", Mechele Hughes - a run-away teenager who ended up working as a stripper in the "final frontiers" of Alaska. More interested in money than love, she thought nothing of being engaged to three men at the same time, as long as they all showered her with presents, and a didn't pressure her to set a date for the wedding.

Kent Leppink failed on both accounts: He started angling for a wedding date and wanted her to meet his family. Both would appear reasonable requests to most, but Mechele felt trapped, and when she also discovered that Kent no longer could give her the gifts she had gotten used to, the life insurance they had taken on him meant that he was worth more to her dead than alive.

And who better to get to commit the murder, than one of her other fiancés, who then thought he'd get her for himself?

Such is the crime the prosecution needs to convict Mechele Hughes of, and as I'm a big fan of true crime and court dramas both, I thought Deadly Angel would be right up my aisle. Unfortunately the writing of the book did not live up to the premise of it. Fred Rosen did not manage to captivate me by the story, and numerous continuity mistakes and randomly inserted factoids made for very awkward reading. The book would have benefited greatly from a thorough editor, who could weed out the unnecessary, take apart the story and put it together in a more concise manner. The time-line kept jumping back and forth in a way that seemed almost arbitrary, and which made following the chain of events difficult, as I was never entirely sure when any given event happened in relation to the others.

The trial itself didn't actually start until the last third of the book, at which case I had already lost interest in the people involved and had guessed the outcome anyway.

There are a number of really excellent true crime stories out there - do yourself a favour, and give this one a miss.

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