Cannibals and Evil Cult Killers - Review

Author: Ray Black

Genre: True Crime

Format: Hardback

Pages: 576

This was one of those books that I never planned on reading, or even knew existed until a coworker put it in my hands. They knew that I liked true crime and horror books, and this had been sitting on their shelf for a bit. All they'd done was flipped through it a couple of times here and there.

I read this book cover to cover, only skipping over the chapter on Manson. I've read Helter Skelter so I didn't need another deep dive into that crazy. Not that the rest of this book wasn't filled to the brim with crazy.

It starts with small stories of cannibals from all over the world. Just a few paragraphs to sort of lay the scene. Easy you into the idea of what you've got yourself into, and then full-on crazy on a nonstop bullet train of what in the actual hell am I reading. I couldn't tell you because I hit plenty of walls where I thought, that's enough of this book.

But I always picked it back up! ALWAYS!

Each section in this is well-researched and jammed packed with information, but each section flows nicely and I never felt overloaded with information. It almost felt like I was watching a small news section on each case. This makes sense with this being published by Times Warner.

It's a creepy as hell book that left me asking myself weird questions after during the cannibals' portion. While the cults section left with questions. A laundry list of them, but none of those questions could be answered in the book. 

For example, why do so many cults that start off with good intentions go wrong so quickly? Why does it take such violent measures to happen before any kind of law enforcement steps in when hinky crap is going on?

This book made my brain run in circles. So it took me nearly a month to read this. I couldn't read it for long stretches, otherwise, my brain might have melted.

My only gripe about this book is that it's poorly edited. I found several spelling mistakes throughout the whole book. There were also several continuity issues. The latter threw me off more than anything when the wrong names were used, only for me to realize it was an editing mistake.

So, if you fan of true crime or horror and see this on a shelf. It's worth a flip through, even if you don't read it cover-to-cover. I learned a few things along the way. Had some weird dreams too. 

HAPPY READING!!