From the New York Times bestselling author of Fatal Vision comes a shocking true account of murder, family secrets, and final justice now available for the first time as an e-book...
One hot summer night in 1988, Bonnie Von Stein's second husband was murdered in their bed, Bonnie herself stabbed, beaten, and left for dead beside him. It looked like a brutal but tragically typical case: Von Stein was newly wealthy, and Bonnie's troubled son Chris, seemed like the obvious suspect.
But Chris turned out to have an air-tight alibi and new leads suggested the crime could be much more complex. The trail led to Chris’s two strange new friends from college and a real-life enactment of a bizarre Dungeons and Dragons fantasy adventure, and it implicated Bonnie's teenage daughter as well.
In Cruel Doubt, Joe McGinniss probes the dark heart of family life and small-town North Carolina society to uncover a fascinating and terrifying story that is at once a chilling murder mystery, a tense courtroom drama, and a heartbreaking account of a mother forced to doubt her own children.
"CRUEL DOUBT is not only about a crime and a trial and remarkable conflicts of interest. It is also, beneath its surface and within its heart, about Joe McGinniss as a quester-for-truth, literary detective, salver and healer."—Frederick Busch, The New York Times Book Review
"More a psychodrama than a detective story, McGinniss has drawn a riveting portrait of parental devotion that flies in the face of truth."—Library Journal
"Joe McGinniss just keeps writing stories that transcend the [true crime] genre, and CRUEL DOUBT is the best of the lot."—Clarence Petersen, Chicago Tribune
"McGinniss is the Alfred Hitchcock of the true-crime genre, a genre he often transcends."—Boston Globe
"McGinniss shows again why he heads the ranks of true crime authors--delivering a page-burner of shifting suspicions, macabre ironies, and reversals of field too extreme for fiction."—Kirkus Reviews
"With CRUEL DOUBT, McGinniss puts more distance between himself and the rest of the pack...He is a touchstone for the traumatized, the troubled, and the treacherous."—Hartford Courant
"One of the best true crime stories ever written."—The Philadelpha Inquirer
Joe McGinniss was a young Philadelphia journalist when he began to follow the team of public relations men and television specialists who created Richard Nixon's image for the American public during the presidential campaign of 1968. In 1969, with the publication of The Selling of the President, Joe McGinnis immediately became a nonfiction star of the first rank. His other books include Heroes, Going to Extremes, Fatal Vision, Cruel Doubt, and a novel, The Dream Team. He lives in Williamstown, Massachusettes.
View titles by Joe McGinniss
From the New York Times bestselling author of Fatal Vision comes a shocking true account of murder, family secrets, and final justice now available for the first time as an e-book...
One hot summer night in 1988, Bonnie Von Stein's second husband was murdered in their bed, Bonnie herself stabbed, beaten, and left for dead beside him. It looked like a brutal but tragically typical case: Von Stein was newly wealthy, and Bonnie's troubled son Chris, seemed like the obvious suspect.
But Chris turned out to have an air-tight alibi and new leads suggested the crime could be much more complex. The trail led to Chris’s two strange new friends from college and a real-life enactment of a bizarre Dungeons and Dragons fantasy adventure, and it implicated Bonnie's teenage daughter as well.
In Cruel Doubt, Joe McGinniss probes the dark heart of family life and small-town North Carolina society to uncover a fascinating and terrifying story that is at once a chilling murder mystery, a tense courtroom drama, and a heartbreaking account of a mother forced to doubt her own children.
Reviews
"CRUEL DOUBT is not only about a crime and a trial and remarkable conflicts of interest. It is also, beneath its surface and within its heart, about Joe McGinniss as a quester-for-truth, literary detective, salver and healer."—Frederick Busch, The New York Times Book Review
"More a psychodrama than a detective story, McGinniss has drawn a riveting portrait of parental devotion that flies in the face of truth."—Library Journal
"Joe McGinniss just keeps writing stories that transcend the [true crime] genre, and CRUEL DOUBT is the best of the lot."—Clarence Petersen, Chicago Tribune
"McGinniss is the Alfred Hitchcock of the true-crime genre, a genre he often transcends."—Boston Globe
"McGinniss shows again why he heads the ranks of true crime authors--delivering a page-burner of shifting suspicions, macabre ironies, and reversals of field too extreme for fiction."—Kirkus Reviews
"With CRUEL DOUBT, McGinniss puts more distance between himself and the rest of the pack...He is a touchstone for the traumatized, the troubled, and the treacherous."—Hartford Courant
"One of the best true crime stories ever written."—The Philadelpha Inquirer
Author
Joe McGinniss was a young Philadelphia journalist when he began to follow the team of public relations men and television specialists who created Richard Nixon's image for the American public during the presidential campaign of 1968. In 1969, with the publication of The Selling of the President, Joe McGinnis immediately became a nonfiction star of the first rank. His other books include Heroes, Going to Extremes, Fatal Vision, Cruel Doubt, and a novel, The Dream Team. He lives in Williamstown, Massachusettes.
View titles by Joe McGinniss
