Ted Bundy: Conversations with a Killer

Ted has quite a bizarre and convoluted way of conversing which makes the reading tricky at times. The book is fascinating and chilling. I liked the good cop/bad cop approach employed by Michaud and Aynesworth as I think it helped to get the most from Bundy. There is so much more in this book than features in the Netflix series. Worth a read.

Firstly thanks to net galley and the publisher for a copy of this book. I am surprised at some of the negative comments/ reviews this book has received. I am old enough to remember Mark Harmon in the role of Ted Bundy in the film The Deliberate Stranger and always wondered what type of a man Ted truly was. This book answers this question. Yes he was a liar and yes he committed hideous crimes however this book shows how clever he actually was and how he managed to kill so many and stay at large for so long. We wi!l never know the true figure of the amount of girls he killed. At the start of the book we are advised by the police officer that some of the things Ted did were not fit to be retold so this can be classed as a warning we will not be given the whole truth. Ted always refers to himself as a third party and he never drops this in all of the meetings with the authors he has. He also shared his views on the death penalty and to be honest this is still a valid argument today. I in no way done in what he did to all those poor girls and I am not attempting to excuse his actions but his intellect shows though, throughout the book, this is not someone who could have ever used an insanity plea as would never have held up. I did laugh at what employment Ted states he would have considered if he had his time again, as anyone who watched the Dexter series would realise where the ending of the series came from. From a true serial killer to a fiction serial killer. Please give this book a chance even if only for the physiological viewpoint of the man.

If you think "ah, I've watched the series on Netflix so I won't bother with the book" then you are missing out.

The book goes so much further than the series does and it's fascinating.
Given the subject at hand and the way Ted Bundy speaks and phrases things, it's a difficult read but so interesting and chilling. How Stephen G. Michaud and Hugh Aynesworth managed to take control of the situation and the patience they must have had was incredible. The subtle wording they use is so interesting, I found myself re-reading sentences a few times just to really get the gist of it.

The book itself is arranged in chronological order of when the interviews took place which I really liked and the version I recieved from Netgalley included the foreword written by Robert Keppel which is as interesting as the rest of the book. He writes of the changes made to the forces largely in part to these cases which is a nice reminder that something was at least learnt amid the horror of Ted Bundy.

Yes I picked this arc as I’d watched the Netflix show and I’m glad I did this goes so much further and has different insights and details the show misses out on. It still doesn’t give you all the facts as the things he did were so disturbing they aren’t fit to be told, it’s an interesting, but as always in these books disturbing read. You can’t say you enjoy it so much, but that it’s thought provoking and scary at the same time. Well worth a read.

Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for a free copy for an honest opinion

As it says in the blurb, Ted Bundy was a master manipulator so who knows if the words he spoke to Stephen G. Michaud and Hugh Aynesworth were actually true. However, it is a fascinating account from a notoriously high profile serial killer which in itself is totally unique. Police procedures have moved on so much from the 1970s, no criminal today would be able to outwit the system like Bundy did. Also, his words may give psychologists and police profilers a better understanding of how the brain of a psychopathic criminal actually works.

Bundy was clever, charismatic to women and craved attention. He spoke in the third person during most of the tapes. This way he could achieve the thrill of describing how he 'thought' the murders would have been done, without ever admitting his guilt. Not once in 150 hours of direct interviewing did he slip up.

Michaud and Aynesworth had a clever way of getting Bundy to reveal information but sometimes the conversations were a little difficult to follow. Bundy's words were vague, even cryptic at times and I had to reread a few sentences to try and get a better understanding.

I had previously watched the Netflix documentary so I felt I had a little background knowledge of the crimes which helped when it came to reading the transcript of the tapes. However, there is far more content in the book and I would definitely recommend both.

All true crime lovers should read this book. It is harrowing and parts will shock you to the core. The writers have given a truly unique insight into the mind of a serial killer, something which may never happen again. Highly recommended.