Dare I Call It Murder? - A Memoir of Violent Loss

Difficult read, many superfluous items, HOWEVER, the book was superb, and real world, do not miss this book!!

Dare I Call It Murder? is a mystery story about two violent deaths with no reliable witnesses, no bodies, and no resolution. With this memoir, Larry Edwards pulls us with him on his thirty year quest to discover the details of how his mother and father died aboard their sailboat in the middle of the South Pacific. The boat was built by Edwards' father who for years hoped a trip across the ocean would unite his family in a grand adventure. Instead the boat became the setting for tragedy. This is not an easy-to-read story or a feel-good adventure. It is a memoir of grief.And it is very compelling. We want to solve this mystery.The pace of the book is rapid. Edwards' clear writing and careful placement of passages, like finely tuned fiction, keep us side by side with him as he frantically pieces together fragments of information, lies, and police ineptness. He is an experienced sailor and utilizes descriptions of weather, rigging, and charts for both narrative explanation and emotional context. So he gives us "the whispers in the rigging and the swoosh of the hull driving through black ocean swells," and "camaraderie drained out of the scuppers like cold seawater washing over the deck."In the end, the mystery of his parents' deaths remains. Edwards' wish for justice is one we all share. That there is no justice in this story focuses the tragedy with great clarity.Dare I Call It Murder? is well worth reading. Highly recommended

I can't remember when I've read a more fascinating or compelling book than "Dare I Call It Murder?" Author Larry Edwards has done a superb job of documenting the complexities surrounding the mysterious deaths of his parents on their yacht in 1978--while keeping the reader in suspense every step of the way. It was a monumental task, and he has accomplished it thoroughly and with deep commitment.The story is tightly structured. Each piece builds on the one before with smooth transitions. Flashbacks tell the backstory, often in touching detail. The scenes are vivid, the dialogue, relaxed and believable.The author is driven to seek justice in honor of his parents' memory. When an FBI investigation stalls and the judicial system fizzles, his resentment festers and eventually pushes him to obtain classified records through the Freedom of Information Act. What he learns is shocking. The final outcome remains pending, but in the meantime "Dare I Call It Murder?" has taken the wraps off a story that was kept hidden for three decades.I felt that reading this book was time well spent.I am awarding it four stars because I think it would have been more effective if it had been condensed by about 10 percent. Sometimes the details got boring: the cigarettes, the cups of coffee, and the many, many references to alcohol. Also, the author indulges in some flights of purple prose. Tightening up the text and toning down the metaphors would turn this very good book into a jewel.

Spurred on in part by an inaccurate account from Ann Rule, Larry Edwards sets the record straight about the mysterious deaths of his parents aboard the Spellbound near French Polynesia.There are a few things I appreciated greatly about this book. For one, the author strives to be meticulous with his facts, yet he never does so at the expense of the emotional impact of the story, which is considerable. Something I often find to be missing from true accounts is a depth of empathy for the families of crime victims. This book does a tremendous job of showing how the consequences of violent death echo not just through the lifetimes of the survivors but through subsequent generations.I could nitpick the writing of the book, but by the end, I came to the conclusion that Edwards is a gifted writer, even if his style is not always to my taste. The story is well-structured and engrossing, and the emotions ring clear and true.I particularly recommend this story to anyone who has read previous accounts of the deaths of Loren and Jody Edwards and found them lacking in insight and follow-through. While the case may remain unprosecuted in perpetuity, the book provides a kind of closure.While this book may not rank with the work of Mailer or Bugliosi, it's leagues above much true-crime writing and it provides an uncommon and valuable insight into the repercussions of violence from the perspective of someone who experienced it firsthand.

I bought this book because of the plethora of 5-star ratings and I wish I'd read the lower-starred as well. Because I feel strongly that this is false advertising, I am writing this review. The author certainly has been through hell and has the stories to prove it, but the book is badly written, narcissistic, and genuinely made me uncomfortable to read. I can't remember a book that left me feeling so personally bad: as if I'd heard too much from someone I didn't really know and the story was unfinished, sad, and hopeless. It's not even the pain and trauma of murder, which of course is horrible, but the terrible, depressing and incredible in-fighting and denial that takes place in this truly dysfunctional family. There seems to be so much going on before the murders in this family... much that remains unsaid and disquieting. It's like relentlessly being told one side of a many-sided story in a very strong, very sure and rather strident voice. My heart goes out to the writer and his family, but this book is shambolic and just not well written.The author does show some good writing, however, when he writes about violent loss and recovery. That is where the writing in this book actually did work pretty well. He should go with that strength and look outside his own experience--it seems to lead him to much better places in life and writing. And Ann Rule, and any writer, that re-victimizes a family in the way this author described, is despicable. She should be outed for it.Also, the writer, from his own descriptions, is clearly an alcoholic, but never confronts that fact even in therapy. That also seemed like such an obvious open wound... I was pretty astonished his therapist never said it. Or that he didn't realize it. Can he be that close to it and *not* recognize it, after all these decades? His descriptions are crystal clear, though. It lies there like an unexploded bomb. Unaddressed. In the end, it's indicative of this book's problems.