Maybe an hour into the story, we’re told how the lead investigator on Loralei Sims’ death found naked pictures of her mother in the father’s bedside table. The narrator remarks that it “wasn’t a pretty sight” and the detective shows his colleagues, who all talk about how “weird” the couple are. Given that this book was co-written with the prosecutor, I wasn’t expecting a nuanced, unbiased perspective, but I also wasn’t expecting an onslaught of crudeness and contempt for the Sims, with no attempt to understand their motives or stories besides “I guess they preferred boys to girls,” a conclusion even the narrator seems to find silly, given the tone of voice when it’s said. The biggest thing missing, of course, is any discussion of post-partum depression. I’ll give the book a little bit of a pass because it was written in the early 1990s, but even so it’s not as if PPD was unknown at the time of the Sims girls’ murders—my own mother was diagnosed with it in 1989, the same year Heather Sims was born and died. The book is determined to paint the Sims parents as “weirdos” (the word is used to describe them at least a dozen times) because they’re obsessively clean and don’t want to talk to the police, neither of which is a crime. Save yourself the time and read an Ann Rule book—she was also writing in the 80s and 90s, yet manages to not sanctify police or prosecutors while still honoring their hard work, and to paint nuanced and complex pictures of perpetrators without excusing their heinous actions. This book was only interested in a black and white narrative, with no examination of the nuances of the case.