Written In Blood By Diane Fanning

An army brat-turned-marine, he saw combat in Vietnam, and returned a decorated soldier. An avid reader, his dreams of being an acclaimed novelist came true. His desire to find love was fulfilled when he married brilliant executive Kathleen Atwater, the first female student accepted at Duke University's School of Engineering. The Petersons seemed the ideal academic couple,well respected, prosperous, and happy. All that came crashing down in December of 2001, when Kathleen apparently fell to her death in their secluded home in an exclusive area of Durham, North Carolina. But blood spattered evidence and a missing fireplace poker suggested calculated, cold-blooded murder. Her trusted husband stood accused.Prosecutors introduced evidence at trial that sixteen years earlier, Peterson was one of the last people to see his neighbour alive before she was found dead at the bottom of a staircase in her home in Germany. A dramatic trial followed in the explosive final chapter of a life that no novelist could ever have conceived...

I honestly thought I had reviewed this book already but apparently not.So THIS is the last Diane Fanning book until her new books get published around the end of the year.I have had "blogger's block" for about a week now and I decided to pull out one of my old books to review.I took out A Perfect Husband by Aphrodite Jones and then thought of referring the review on Written In Blood to that one because they are the same story and then realised,no review done yet!!!For the record I did enjoy the Aphrodite Jones version better but that could be because I had read her version first.

Diane Fanning has an effortless and easy way of writing and that could explain why I actually finished this book even though I knew the story already.I have been struggling the past week with two books that I am reading together and honestly I don't know which of the two is worse.So the stress brought on my blogger's block(lol).I loved the fact that Diane Fanning delved quite deeply into the background of the main characters and their lives up until the day of the murder.There is quite a bit of the court drama but what I love about her books is at the end she usually has an "afterword" section where she really captures the essence of the book and I always end up reliving the book for a few hours afterwards.

What did strike me at the end of this book though is how many Peterson husbands have killed their wives.This one Michael Peterson,then the Laci Peterson story and then the other Peterson guy,the one who pretended to go to medical school for four years and when the wife found out she ended up dead and now the latest is Drew Peterson.Another thing that I do as a matter of course is note the star signs of the people involved if they give the dates of birth and so far I have read 3 books where the Libra husbands murdered their Taurus wives.Laci Peterson is one of them.Strange,hey??

There are quite a few people who believe in Michael Peterson's innocence and the argument raised to them by people who believe he is guilty,is that how can the same man be in such close proximity to 2 women who die mysteriously by falling down a staircase?I believe he is guilty but here is a little argument for the pro-Michael Peterson people.You know the saying "lightning never strikes twice...".Well it has been proven that if you have ever been struck by lightning the chances of being struck again increases dramatically and if you have been struck twice then,okay,you get the point.

If you are interested in finding out more about Diane Fanning's version of the Michael Peterson story then South African readers can access via Kalahari Books and for more reviews on this book the Amazon link below will provide those.
Written in Blood

Here is a bit more information for readers who want to find the book from another bookstore or library.

Publisher: St. Martin's Press
ISBN: 9780312994037
Publication date: February 2005
Pages: 416
Illustrations: Illustrated

I read this book in March 2009 and it has the usual 8 pages of photographs.And the book cover I have is different to this one above which I found online so I have no idea what that is about.Maybe they do different covers for the same books?