Fatal Romance (St. Martin's True Crime Library) | Lisa Pulitzer

Fatal Romance (St. Martin's True Crime Library) | Lisa Pulitzer | could have been a great book

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Fatal Romance (St....

	Fatal Romance (St. Martin's True Crime Library) Lisa Pulitzer St. Martin's Paperbacks, 2001 - 256 pages average customer review:based on 15 reviews view larger image
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Nancy Richards was a young, beautiful speechwriter when she met Jeremy Akers, a decorated war hero and environmental lawyer. Nancy was immediately taken with the daredevil adventurer,a and it wasn't long before their intense courtship led to a whirlwind marriage and children. Discovering she had a talent for penning historical romance novels, Nancy found fame as a bestselling author. But Nancy's life was far from the happily-ever-after romances she wrote about...

Nancy's friends alleged that behind the doors of the couple's home in one of Washington, D.C.'s most exclusive neighborhood,s he suffered repeated abuse at the hands of her husband. They also said that Nancy had told them Jeremy was resentful of her success and growing independence, and his beatings soon escalated into death threats. Torn between being forced to give up her kids and risking her life by remaining with jeremy, Nancy moved into a one-bedroom basement apartment with a young male friend. After several pleas to visit the children, Nancy was finally allowed to take them on an outing. And just whens he dared to hope that the worst was over, Jeremy shot her twice in the back of the head, killing her in front of their two youngest children. he then drove to the Vietnam War Memorial, where he killed himself with a shotgun.

Fatal Romance is the shocking true story of the romance novelist who dreamed of the happiness she wrote of--only to die at the hand sof the man she loved.

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An American reader in Japan

I have read this book over and over, and I love it. The portrait of Nancy is not always flattering, but the book shows that she was raised in a very different world from the average American, and her priorities were a bit skewed. She grew up with servants, but couldn't afford her own. She went to private schools, but couldn't afford the same for her own children. She and Jeremy were hounded by bill collectors, yet she filled her home with expensive items and only wore Laura Ashley dresses. She struggled, as an adult, to re-create the privileged world she grew up in, only to fall short of her own expectations. She had to beg for help from her parents to pay her children's tuition. She could be snobbish and vain, and her flaws made her a somewhat less than sympathetic, but still very human, victim.
Jeremy, her betrayed husband,killed her in a jealous rage. He committed a hideous crime in front of his children, but Nancy seems almost to have driven him to it. His wife abandoned him for a truck driver young enough to be her son, then shack up with the truck driver right down the street from the home she shared with her family. Nancy accused Jeremy of physical abuse, yet she left their young children with him when she left. Her claims of abuse are obviously attempts to excuse what she has done, and to gain sympathy. Nancy fights for custody of her abandoned children, yet she is living in a one-bedroom basement apartment with her boyfriend. What I like so much about this book is that the killer and the victim are 3-dimensional characters, with strengths as well as flaws. Nobody is all good, and nobody is all evil, which makes them more interesting.

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could have been a great book

In "Fatal Romance" Lisa Pulitzer presented both Nancy and Jeremy Akers as strange people, but in attempting to create a fair and balanced picture of both spouses, missed delving into the obvious personality disorder which led to Jeremy shooting Nancy to death in front of two of their children. While it is refreshing that Nancy was not presented as a saint, but as a creative person who could also be pretentious and snobbish, the author seemed reluctant to admit that Nancy suffered mental if not physical abuse for years. Jeremy, who had the education and potential as an attorney to support his family, refused to do so, only paying for housing and refusing to pay the family's bills. He demanded that Nancy pay the household expenses, yet frustratingly refused to let her work outside the home. He spent huge amounts of money on trips, clothing, and sports equipment for himself, while Nancy stayed home with the three children, the phone constantly ringing from collection agencies calling and stacks of past-due bills coming daily in the mail. Nancy was an unsympathetic victim who possessed a sense of entitlement, insisting that her children go to expensive private schools, and only dressing in Laura Ashley dresses and undergarments from Victoria's Secret. It was clear that Jeremy, who presented himself to other women as powerful, successful, and charismatic, had affairs, and the Jeremy that only Nancy knew was spinning out of control: he became a packrat and cheapskate who picked through neighbors' garbage and filled the house with stacks of old newspapers and other junk, making it impossible for Nancy to keep a decent house. When company came over Jeremy relished blaming Nancy for being a bad housekeeper. Jeremy, who had been a marine, was big on physical fitness and discipline, and treated Nancy, who he forced into the role of a harried, overweight housewife, with complete contempt. He loved to insult her in front of others. Nancy made some feeble attempts to negotiate change in her marriage, but Jeremy, using the classic defense mechanisms of the narcissist, always managed to maintain the upper hand. After years in this miserable situation, Nancy met a younger man online, an uneducated truck driver, who viewed Nancy as sophisticated and successful due to her wealthy background and modest success as a romance writer. Everyone involved seemed determined to ignore the warning signs of Jeremy's instability. Even Nancy, who had lived with Jeremy for twenty years, failed to realize that the outward signs of eccentricity displayed by her husband were only the tip of the iceburg: his distorted pride and arrogance had grown into a malignancy which would not allow him to ever accept losing, especially to a man he considered far below him, and Nancy, a mere woman he had devalued for years. While Pulitzer provided a lot of detail about the lives of this troubled couple, Ann Rule would have done a better job with this story, which lacked psychological depth and fell flat. It would have been easy to give this story the direction and drive it needed to be a really excellent book. It was clear from Jeremy's actions that he suffered severe psychological disorders for years, yet the author did not make clear the most important element of the story: the progression of Jeremy's psychological state from the pride and self-discipline of his youth, the worsening narcissistic personality disorder during the course of his marriage, finally culminating in murder and suicide when he could not keep Nancy under his thumb and "win". If the book had emphasized the progression of Jeremy's personality disorders, and made it clear that Jeremy and Nancy were not simply equally strange, disfunctional people, it would have given the story more direction and urgency. As written, the book generated little outrage against the murderer and not much sympathy for the victim.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3

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