David Maust violently murdered five teenage boys and violently assaulted twelve others. Why? Rumors have been wrong! Based on David's autobiography that he penned in jail before he committed suicide, now the REAL truth is told in this chilling account of his life and crimes
This was a quick read despite the size of the book. And it's a good thing, too, because it was hard to bear the 400+ pages of tragedy, self-loathing and ugliness in David Maust's life story. The story struggled to stay afloat in a sea of mixed metaphors, purple prose, and song lyrics. As if the brutal deaths of these boys weren't bad enough, one of them has the lyrics from "Seasons In The Sun" by Terry Jacks as his literary epitaph. The mind boggles. I caught myself thinking over and over that what this book needed was a good editor and a squad of copyeditors, but to my astonishment, the author listed all these people by name at the end, making me wonder how clumsy the writing must have been before all the improvements. With all that said, this gave me a lot of insight into David Maust. I only wish the boys he killed hadn't gotten lost I the sauce.
As a native of Hammond, Indiana where the serial killer chronicled in this biography murdered his last three victims, I was shocked when he was arrested in 2003. I didn't know any of the victims, but my home town was in an uproar and I stayed abreast of any new development in the news. I used to be an avid reader, and I'm sorry to say that with life being as busy as it's been, that slipped to the back of my priorities. "Blood Stained" changed that.
When I read this book I couldn't put it down. Mrs. Maust, who is not related to the killer David Maust, used a completely different approach to writing a biography and I loved it. She also did her research 120% and some of what I learned in her book about our system failures and the media lies just blew me away.
She has five other books out, and although they are fiction and unrelated, I've ordered the first one in her series and I would like to thank her for not only getting me back into reading with this really chilling book about David but also for prompting me to join this book club and setting the truth straight.