Thanks Kensington and Netgalley for the ARC of this crime investigation story. Ultimately, I did not enjoy it and did not finish. I found the writing to be less than engaging and felt like it could have been more interesting. I admire the author’s efforts to investigate though and to chronicle her work.

I read "With One Shot" at the same time as I listened to Steinbeck's "East of Eden", and I was stunned by the similarities between Steinbeck's Kathy and the murder suspect in this book, Suzanne. Both women are truly dreadful human beings. The things that Suzanne would say and do, and the things she got away with, are truly astounding..
I read 50% of this book, and I didn't feel the need to finish it. The book is more a memoir about the author's research efforts than a narrative true crime story. I feel this would have been a much better book if the story was told in a linear fashion with less focus on the author as a researcher.

Dorothy Marcic puts it all on the line when she wrote this book.
It is well written. Detail oriented. Interesting, titillating, and full of facts.
Taking the journey through this sad story helps you feel the injustice and the pain.
It is a painful process to try and find closure in an event that is so close to ones heart. The author has done a phenomenal job in trying to do just that.
5 Stars

The thing is very simple: The district attorney (James C. Boll), the ADA (Victor Mussallem) and the prosecutor handled it all wrong right from the beginning. They let a murderer run free. Suzanne Stordock’s lawyers (Kenneth Orchard and Jack Van Metre) had their act together - they did what was best for their client, painting her instantly as a victim of a violent toxic marriage that exploded in seconds of insanity in an otherwise rational person and added a schizophrenia to boot! Unfortunately, the DA did not pursue the case as a murder and he certainly did not consider Suzanne a conniving murderous tramp (as the author and her entire family do). From March 1970- January 1971, the court transcripts detailed from pages 107 to 118 read like a train wreck or a joy ride (depending on your perspective). Complete miscarriage of justice and its entirely the prosecution’s fault. There wasn’t even a proper trial. Icing on cake: ‘So I don’t believe that the State has any chance whatever of prevailing or being able to destroy or overcome the case that could and I am sure would be put on by defense, and I don’t really believe that any function would be served by a trial.’

I don’t know why this decision came as a shock to Verne Stordock’s mother who was in the court room at the time. Usually, DA’s office inform the victim’s family in advance of their decision as to the case.

The murder was done with premeditation (the heavy long gun was either below the waist or someone was kneeling down from the door!) even if it means someone got so angry with a naked guy in the bedroom that his head had to be blown off. And Elmira Irene Brandon / Susanne Stordock / Suzanne Brandon got away with it. Maybe she got her son to do it, but David comes across as a passive, lying, yes-ma’am (complete with a cringe-inducing flirtation with the author as a 50-year old, which the author does not discourage). I believe Suzanne did it in a fit of anger (like ‘one of these days I’m going to teach you a real lesson’ kind of anger or maybe she was thinking of all the insurance money and mansion). Unfortunately, there was no trial. So no one knows for sure who pulled the trigger.

L. Verne G. Stordock left a will and it named his second wife Suzanne and adopted son Daniel (who later committed suicide). I don’t know why his children from his first marriage did not contest the will. Since Suzanne was not convicted of any crime, she could legally inherit everything unless the stepchildren’s lawyer filed a civil suit or something to get some cash out of her. This was also not done. I also do not know why the Stordock family (his mother, surviving brother, sister - the author’s mother) did not push the police, DA and media right from the start for the murder to be treated as murder and not a victim-revenge and were not involved in the 9 months it took a non-trial to set the ‘accused’ free. I also don’t know how a woman can claim inheritance without showing actual proof of marriage (or common law wife status, if such existed in Wisconsin in 60s-70s), but the author cannot even state clearly whether there was a second Mrs. Stordock or not.

This book is a long testament to a family’s - or in particular Verne Stordock’s daughter Shannon and his niece, the author’s - inability to let go off the fact that the system (specifically its handlers) failed them. The author is resentful but her ire is directed at the wrong person: to me, it feels like the prosecuting authority (the DA, not police or forensics) are ultimately responsible for the leniency shown to Suzanne Stordock. And irrespective of all the insinuations about corruption of the entire system that the author makes, the basic thing is this: the police made the initial arrest and forensics looked at the scene of the crime - it was the lethargic, incompetent and criminally negligent prosecutorial behavior that allowed her defense team to make a mockery of the justice system. The author can assume ulterior motives for the sheriff, the officers, the DA, the ADA, the psychiatrists, but there is zero evidence to show for it.

However, the author is obsessed with the (at time of her death, in 2017) 88-year old Suzanne Brandon, searching for her ancestors, relatives, friends, children and relatives of previous husbands! etc. etc. To me, Elmira Irene Brandon / Suzanne Stordock / Suzanne Brandon comes across as a highly attractive woman (to men) as evidenced by her 5 marriages (the last one was to a thrice-married oldie with whom she lived to his dying day). She was a selfish, manipulative, talented, highly educated, high-pitched shrew, who knew what was best for her. She doesn’t come across as much of a mother. This book of course is not going to be the best judge of her other (unknown) characteristics. Her life after the murder shows her enterprising ‘devil may care’ nature. From dirt-poor beginnings to mansions, she came a long way to getting her way. But the author paints her as a ‘mata hari’, a woman who befuddles other women (what does a man see in her?), a woman who seduces and literally sucks the life out of helpless rich souls who know no better, a woman who lies and cheats and schemes her way through life, a puppet-master to the legal system, fooling everyone except the family of Verne Stordock. To this pile, the author also adds the tag of ‘probable serial killer’ who is not averse to killing her own kids. I think the author is giving too much credit to the thin blonde.

This is a book full of misdirected rage. Stordock family has my sympathy.

Great murder/sleuth story. Kept wanting to finish it to find out "Who did it?" Well developed characters. Would recommend to others.

When a crime hits so close to home, I would imagine the desire to understand what happened and why. When the 'facts' are murky, when the stories don't really add up, then the urge to understand is even greater.
The author has to reconcile what happened to her family with the variety of stories that have been told and how the behaviors of the players can be as told, when it is clear that nothing is as it seems.

There are so many inconsistencies, so many gaps in the story, so many things that simply don't make sense that attempting to have the facts fall into place is impossible.
As with so many tragedies, hindsight is 20/20, coulda, shoulda, woulda, and inevitably, learning to live with unresolved threads makes this read both fascinating and tragic. The nice results and explanations in fiction crime don't apply here, Learning to live with the frustration of not knowing, not understanding and having no chance to change it is the central message in this book.

If you want a good dose of family drama to lose yourself in (somebody else's family, that is), boy, do I have the book for you! This is like Jerry Springer on steroids, but better. This book has it all: murder, multiple marriages, divorces, suspicious deaths, backwoods creepy houses in the hollers of Tennessee, affairs, psychiatric hospitals, illegitimate children, secret adoptions, lies, narcissists, and more. This story is almost too crazy to be true - but you couldn't make this up. This was a fascinating glimpse at not just a murder, but all of the drama and dynamics surrounding it.

I could not make it past 35% of this book. This is not a good book. The premise sounded like a good one and I do enjoy a good true crime book but this was not one of them. The author makes it pretty clear early on how qualified she is to be an expert on every subject that she encounters. She frequently mentions all of her academic accomplishments and books that she written. Most infuriating though is the easy way she dismisses claims of abuse or alcoholism by those she doesn’t like. Forget the fact that she makes extraordinary claims with absolutely no evidence to back it up and consistently inserts her personal opinions and feelings into the narrative, she also believes that she has the sole right and ability to determine whether someone has experienced abuse because she has witnessed or experienced abuse and therefore knows exactly what abuse looks like. Abuse takes on so many different forms and looks different to everyone. How dare she claim that she knows better than average what abuse looks like? I had to stop highlighting passages from the book in which the author makes outlandish acclaims of authority else every page would be filled with orange. This was a poorly written book. Marcic seems to have wanted to write a book about herself and she should have just done that. This book was not about her uncle’s murder. It was all about her.

I just can't. I had to put this book down after reading less than half of it. It was that awful. I'm so sorry to have to do this with a NetGalley book, but I couldn't finish it. I've read dozens of true crime books in my life, and this one looked and sounded interesting - good cover, intriguing story, and the author is the niece of the murdered man, so I was hopeful that it would be compelling. I'm afraid not.

The story itself, if written in a different manner, has the makings for a fascinating read. The author attempts to tell the story of her uncle, a law enforcement official, who was shot in his home one night. Ms. Marcic has many questions about that night and whether it was actually the wife or the stepson who fired the single shot. After much research, she puts down her thoughts as to what may have happened.

Unfortunately, the writing is very amateurish and not cohesive. Many times, the author writes as if she's just talking to the reader. Nothing essentially wrong with this; however, it's confusing at times as she bounces around from person to person in the story. And there are a LOT of persons in the story. It was hard for me to keep track of who was whom. If she had actually been telling the story to me verbally, I would have had to stop her multiple times and ask, "Now wait. Who are you talking about now? And where did this happen?" Also, rather than staying consistent with the facts, she interjects her own feelings or biases with remarks such as these, "his face...appeared intelligent and kind...with a rectangular shape, strong jaws, and dark straight hair, as you'd expect of a stalwart hero" or "he looked like someone who was smart in school but perhaps socially awkward." She also compares several people to movie actors. These things taken in small doses are fine, but it's consistent throughout the book (or at least as far as I read). The final straw for me came when she wrote, "Roberts later lost his medical license for having sex with a patient, which says he is not only corruptible, but especially vulnerable to women who employ what they used to call 'feminine wiles.'" Uh-oh.

I don't want to slam the author. She has written several other books in a different genre than this one, and maybe they are well-written. I can also appreciate the fact that she took on a difficult topic that was close to her and wanted to find out the truth. Unfortunately, her style turned me off completely.

I do thank NetGalley and Kensington Books/Citadel for the opportunity to read and review with my honest opinion.