competently written

A well written piece... the downside being it felt like a fictional story. I would have preferred more restraint in the writing... and find the omniscient voice uncomfortable. It feels as tho there is a blurring of the lines between the author's place as reporting factually and appearing to be present first person.

Well narrated

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Brillantly written

As a follower of the true crime genre, I had never heard of this case before so took a punt. It was well written and researched and I finished it in a day and a half. If you like true crime and are interested in death penalty cases from all sides of the divide, this audio book is for you.

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2 people found this helpful

The trouble with true stories

Any additional comments?

The trouble with true stories is that the writer is given his plot, for good or bad, as it happened. The history of Velma Barfield's life may simply not lend itself to a satisfying story. If every good tale needs a villain, we would expect Velma, the serial killer of this true story, to take on that role. And what we expect is for the villain to come to a satisfying defeat, bringing closure to the book. In the case of Death Sentence that all starts getting muddled up about halfway through: Velma is arrested, tried and sentenced to the capital punishment. We have reason to feel justice, resolution and closure. But, yet... the writer carries on. We have dozens of chapters to go in which our "villain" is now humanized, made to seem pitiful, pious and even noble. As the book closes we are left with a decidedly mixed feeling. Should we sympathise with a woman who poisoned her own mother (among many others)? Or should we feel vindication that a woman who becomes a paragon of caring whilst in prison, is herself then poisoned by the State? I spent the days after finishing this story wondering what to think. Ultimately it was muddied story, with no clear hero, and only a feeling of disappointment with the state of humankind in general at the end.

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4 people found this helpful

Not Great

I found this dragged on and on it could have been half the length and told the story.

It was also very one sided I felt as though I was being pummeled into being sympathetic towards Velma Barfield by the repetition of excuses for her behavior when in truth nothing exceptional ever happened. Her life maybe was not perfect but whose truly is? She made bad choices it should be remembered gave her victims no choice.

Narration was nasal and I guess not much to be done with this book but to plain read it which is what Kevin Stillwell did.

14 hours 43 minutes where 4 hours would have been enough.

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4 people found this helpful