Deadly Innocence

Deadly Innocence by Scott Burnside

My review

rating: 2 of 5 stars
So I keep reading true crime when what I actually want to be reading are the custodial offender interview reports from the Behavioral Sciences Unit. Those are slightly harder to get your hands on (not impossible, though). And one of these days I'm just going to have to stop reading true crime as a pale, pale substitute, because, well, insert a brief essay here on the many reasons true crime is inherently problematic.



This particular book is actually half-decent. Paul Bernardo raped an uncertain number of women in Canada and then, with the coerced help of his wife, kidnapped, tortured, and killed school girls. Bernardo is about as typical an anger-excitation rapist sadist as you can find, complete with huge mommy issues and textbook financial scamming. The authors of this book are right to say that his wife, Karla, is the much more interesting of the two. Somehow, the long, grueling descriptions of her subjugation are more brutal to read than the brief, jigsaw reconstructions of the murders.



Anyway, not bad as true crime goes, with a nearly alarming adherence to flat reportage and relatively mild doses of the misogyny and classism that can get pretty toxic in true crime. Still, not at all what I wanted – this book is all what and why and when and how, and the only thing that I ever really want to know is why.




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