The Want Ad Killer

great book

As always, Ann Rule delivers the complete account of a monster who has lived among us posing threats to many young women. Harvey Carignan, who characterizes himself as a victim of all the signicant women in his life seeks revenge wielding power over women he has lured into his vehicle. Some lived to testify of a terrifying ordeal!I couldn't fall asleep after reading 2/3 if the book. Yet, when it happened, I felt an eerie presence. A shadow of a huge man covered me and a cold shiver went through my body like a sharpened knife. Without my head leaving the pillow from the living room sofa, I ran to my bedroom with that ghastly behemoth upon my heels and his hot breath on the back of my neck!!I closed the bedroom door locking it behind me! My feet were firmly planted so that I too would not feel the pangs of horror so many women before me had felt. I have got to stop reading these books! True crime is the most frightening genre of literature. My eyes opened and my heart was racing until I realized it was just a nightmare induced by reading The Want Ad Killer by Ann Rule. There are no happy ending in true crime. However the author does this story and the countless victims who suffered by the hand if this monster as much justice as possible. Great read for true crime fanatics!

It's Christmas 2016, and as I just finished reading "The Want Ad Killer," I just realized an incredible irony: Harvey Carignan is still alive, and Ann Rule is not.Of course, Ms. Rule died in the last couple of years, and supposedly, there was quite a bit of turmoil within the family. And what may be even more ironic: people in her own family supposedly stole money from her at the end, committing true-crime themselves. Life does imitate art occasionally.I have read quite a few books now from Ms. Rule, and one thing is obviously clear: her earlier works were surely better than her later ones. "A Stranger Beside Me," "The I-5 Killer," "Lust Killer" (LK), and of course "The Want Ad Killer" being of the former. And ironically, I believe most of those were written under the "Andy Stack" pseudonym, but all of those are really good. Later on, she went on to write books such as "Green River Running Red" (GRRR), which is almost unreadable. But it does make me wonder: what happened? Where did "Andy Stack" go?Well, I personally feel that she leaned too far towards the "victims' advocacy" position in her later works, and it watered them down, just like some of the victims were soaked in LK and GRRR, as they were thrown like trash into the rivers of the Northwest. Ann Rule was certainly an "icon" -- although that word is used so much that it's nearly lost its meaning -- and people never want to be critical of "icons." But if you want to give a truly-good review of any work, you need to discuss the good with the bad. And compare and contrast.And this is certainly one of Ms. Rule's better efforts. It's told in mostly a linear fashion when possible, and better yet, it's told through the perspective of one of the victim's mothers, at least through about the first half of the book. It gives us someone to care about, someone to root for, just like that early Ann Rule -- more like Andy Stack -- who didn't just pump out true-crime books, but rather, took her -- or rather his -- time to do research and tell a story the way it deserved to be told.If you're in to true crime, in particular the "serial killer subgenre," if that is the correct phrase, then this book is for you. It has murder, it has mayhem, and it has suspense. And it even keeps up that suspense, through the trial phase. And as any true-crime aficionado knows, the trial phase can usually be snooze inducing. Not so here.Well, Harvey Carignan is still around, amazingly, hanging out and doing pull-ups in some prison in Minnesota, supposedly. But Ann Rule is gone. Luckily for us, Andy Stack still lives on. It makes me want to now do a search on books written by "him," as those were really good.

As with The Lust Killer, this reissue of a book that Rule apparently wrote, under the pen name of Andy Stack, is very weak in comparison to her later work.She skims over details here that later in her writing she would have included.The Courtroom scene is rather dull in this book and in the other resissues, though I suppose Courtroom scenes are inherently dull when viewing them. Still, in her later work, Rule is able to keep Courtroom scenes lively. Not here!Upon finishing this book, I felt quite disappointed. It simply isn't Rule at her best. I'd have been much happier, as an Ann Rule fan, if she'd rewritten these reissues, rather than dredging them up from the past.I found this a really mediocre read, though I surely wouldn't want to encounter Harvey in a dark alley. I wouldn't want to encounter Harvey in a brightly-lit alley, either. One of my major thoughts while reading this was, "I hope to God Minnesota has changed their felonly conviction laws."I don't recommend this book...not even to Ann Rule fans.

A book worth your time. Ann Rule knows how to weave a tale of Horror. This killer turned my stomach, but I couldn't put the book down. I am giving "murder" a rest for a few days and read how to perfect my piano technique due to my murder overload by Ann Rule. I tried to read her I-5 Murders but it was just too much. I may try that book again in the winter but the Want Add Killer reads like a novel and it was actually enjoyable except for the telling of his crimes against young girls and women. It scares me to think that this man just might have enough "juice" left in old age when he gets out of the pen. My hope is that they won't let him out. It seems that though he had accumulated over 100 years for his crimes he would serve only 40. I do hope that when the parole board looks over his crimes --no one in their right mind would let this demon out.

Maybe TOO well. I had to stop reading at night so I wouldn't have nightmares. There were no gorey pictures (although there were interesting ones) but the scenes were described so I could see them in my mind and was afraid of bad dreams.But it was a really interesting way to get into the mind of a psychopath (I will never use the term "psychotic" wrong again. It's because of killers like this that I am pro death sentence.

This book is just another example of Ann Rule's incomparable grasp of true crime writing. The characters are expertly set up in a personal, easy-to-understand way. And once the trial proceeds, the direct quotes and conversational nature put the reader right in the courtroom. It's everything that has made Rule such a pillar of this genre.

Always a very enjoyable read. Anne Rule is by far my favourite author. Suspenseful and so cleverly written.

Though this is not as detailed as her later works, Ann Rule had once again succeeded in hooking me into the story so well that I read it in barely three sittings. She has a way of presenting the information in a way that is almost story-like; I am constantly having to remind myself that this all really happened. I especially loved how she told the story of Kathy Sue Miller in such a way to make us remember her as a person, not just a victim.

My wife said it was a good read.

You can tell that this was one of Ann Rule's first books as not as detailed as her newer ones. Still a very good read. Can't believe he escaped for so long. I think the justice system needs changing in certain parts of America and life should mean life.Ann Rule is still the best true crime writer around.

Good writer