Poison Candy: Library Edition

I love a good sociopath murder mystery, and I do enjoy well written law stories. Scott Turow, for instance. Even "One L" his account of being a first year Harvard Law student. Cross reference this with not watching much TV but I love Criminal Minds... It gives you a decent picture of my tastes. You can't imagine my great surprise and incredible delight when I download this book and I can't put it down... It's been a long time since I've read a book this captivating from page one. You see, I had no expectations. I was unfamiliar with the case and honestly I purchased the book because Mark Ebner is on of those FB friends you some how manage to pick up along the way via 3 or 4 generations of people. I've never met him but we have a college in common, sort of... Weird, right. And then oh by the way, this book was released and the next think you know it's rocketing into a group of books I reserved as favorites. Completely unexpected. Congratulations Ms Parker & Mr Ebner.... Very Well Done. I shall Tweet & FB about it too. Jen Levine

"Poison Candy" provides an in-depth look at the Dippolito murder-for-hire case where Dalia conspired to have her husband Mike murdered. The story is something out of a Hollywood movie: boiler room scams, felons, prostitution, drugs, a less than year-long marriage, and an extravagant lifestyle that contributed to both Dalia and Mike's downfalls. Dalia, painted to be a woman to whom no man could say no, had affairs, one of her "friends with benefits", Mohammed, being the one to turn her into the police in an attempt at escaping prosecution. Dalia caught him in her web of lies and Mohammed knew if he didn't do something, he would be implicated when Mike turned up dead. Police hatched a plan to videotape the murder-for-hire meetings and went so far as to stage a murder scene to test Dalia's reaction, enlisting the help of the reality television series COPS (who happened to have been riding along) to make it look all the more authentic. Under the guise of being a news crew, COPS films Dalia's reaction to the news that her husband has been murdered (something she knows because she financed the hit). When she later finds out Mike (who she had been stealing money and property from, had turned into the police to have his probation violated on several occasions, and has planted drugs on in an attempt at sending him back to jail) is alive, she looks to downplay what she had attempted to do, saying it was an elaborate plot to get a reality television show. The book starts fast, with several chapters offering an inside look at Mike and Dalia's lurid meeting, their whirlwind romance, and the long list of terrible ways Dalia was trying to ruin her new husband. This is the meat of the book. The story is complicated and there are a lot of players, double-dealings, and deceptions. The author does a good job helping keep these things straight, if not too good a job. The repetition did slow down the pace. About a third of the way in, we get into the rambling transcripts that become an annoyance. These aren't well-spoken people, there's a lot of round about conversation, more double-talk, and the sense that we're going to be beat over the head with the same handful of "facts." My least favorite part of the book is that soggy middle, but the unfiltered look at what was say, where, how, and by whom does lend context and character. The closing arguments wrap everything up, connecting all of the dots, and leading to what seems an inevitable (and inevitably overturned) sentencing. There's no feeling of justice, only the sense that if one sticks to their story well enough, clings to the absolute fabricated truth, that commitment will bear fruit. I feel terrible for Mike, but you know, every story has two sides. This book is in no way written from Dalia's. A good true crime read. Sometimes fact is stranger than fiction.

I first got interested in this case when I saw the COPS episode, then watched the many videos posted online. There is some interesting stuff in here to be sure (especially the first murder attempt using anti-freeze which didn't get as much publicity), and it is good to see how a prosecutor's office prepares for a big high profile case. I also appreciated that the author gave the defense attorney his due. He had the almost impossible job of trying to make chicken salad out of...well you know and he did the best he could given the facts of the case. However...there are two major problems with the book: 1. The author doesn't mention until the epilogue that she is now in private practice and representing Michael Dippolito. This should have been mentioned right up front so the readers would be able to take her biases (and financial interest) into consideration when evaluating the way she treats Micheal in the book. While I don't think he deserved to have his wife try to have him killed, Micheal Dippolito is such a loser, such a horrible person, such a total con man, that I fail to have any sympathy for him at all and fail to believe any word that comes out of his mouth. Until the very end, he was trying to pull the long con, trying to do anything he could to somehow get off probation without actually paying back his victims through legitimate hard work. 2. Far too much of the chapters about the actual trial are simply cut and pastes of the trial transcript. Lazy writing to be sure and, worse for the reader, boring. I have sat through a trial as a juror. I did it because I had to, its not something I would choose to do in my leisure time. Reading page after page of trial transcript, or what amounts to basically the prosecutor's entire closing statement was mind-numbing. I would love to see what a good true crime author would have done with this trial.

The book is in excellent condition, very happy.

I felt so sorry for Mike, gullible is an understatement

Very good read would recommend