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Sneak a peek at the true crime novel AGGRAVATED by Michael Sirois on my blog, and enter the giveaway to win your own signed copy of the book - five winners!

https://alltheupsandowns.blogspot.com/2021/03/book-blitz-and-giveaway-aggravated-by.html

**BOOK SYNOPSIS**
In 2006, the author's brother, Steve Sirois, was sentenced to serve 35 years in a Texas prison for a horrendous crime, aggravated sexual assault of a child -- a crime Steve swore he didn't commit. After the conviction, Michael started helping Steve write his appeals, but what he saw in the trial transcripts made him question how a jury could have convicted his brother based on that testimony.

Steve's accuser originally gave vague dates for the crime but soon abandoned those dates and even replaced the details of her claims with new ones. There was no forensic evidence, no DNA, no physical evidence of any kind: nothing but his accuser's words. The author wondered if he could prove that her accusations were false. But how?

Using affidavits, court transcripts, and interviews, along with additional evidence from public information requests and other factual data, the book lays out a devastating portrait of an untruthful accuser, an overzealous prosecutor, a jury that made a deal to swap votes in order to gain a conviction, and the series of lies that led to that outcome.

Kudos Comment

Representations of Finite Groups: Local Cohomology and Support

David J. Benson, Srikanth Iyengar and Henning Krause

(0 Ratings) Rate It

Book

The seminar focuses on a recent solution, by the authors, of a long standing problem concerning the...

Sarah (7800 KP) rated Insomnia in Books

Jun 17, 2020

Insomnia

Stephen King | 2011 | Horror, Science Fiction/Fantasy

8.7

(25 Ratings)

Book Rating

Reading this would be a great cure to insomnia...

This book has been on my shelf for quite some time. Mainly because it's a beast of a read - a huge 650 page hardback book - and I've not had the inclination to read. As my pile of unread books is dwindling drastically, I finally decided to give it a go and overall I was pleasantly surprised.

My biggest surprise when reading the first few chapters was the realisation that this book isn't what the Christopher Nolan film Insomnia was based on. I cant even tell you why I thought this in the first place 😕 Once I got over this, I really got into the book or at least the first few hundred pages. As always with King, the book is very well written with a likeable protagonist and well developed secondary characters. The problem is that the story is maybe a little convoluted and isn't helped by the sheer length of it all. 200 pages in I was wondering how this could be dragged out for 650 pages and whilst it never gets as tedious as you'd imagine, this is definitely longer than it needed to be. Whilst the plot is typical King, it gets a little confusing and 'out there' even for him and I think he could've simplified this a little. Because of this I could only read up to 100 pages at a time as it made me feel rather sleepy - a perfect cure for insomnia I'm sure.

By the end of the book I did come to at least enjoy this story more than I thought I would, and even shed a tear or two. This definitely isn't a book for casual readers though and not one of King's best. But if you're looking for a door stop sized challenge, you could do much worse than this!