To The Last Breath
Three Women Fight For The Truth Behind A Child's Tragic Murder
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
On January 22, 1994, two-year old Renee Goode played happily with her sisters and cousin, as the four of them enjoyed an impromptu "slumber party" at the home of her father, Shane Goode. The next day she was dead.
The local medical examiner could not determine the cause of little Renee's death. But her mother Annette and grandmother Sharon were convinced she'd been murdered--and that they knew the identity of Renee's killer: her handsome father, Shane Goode, a manipulative, emotionally abusive man who displayed virtually no interest in Renee--until he took out a $50,000 insurance policy on her life.
With the help of a courageous female police investigator and Assistant DA, Sharon launched a case against Shane and had Renee's tiny coffin, lovingly filled with her favorite stuffed animals, exhumed from its final resting place. And her small corpse revealed what her grandmother had suspected all along: cold, calculating Shane Goode had murdered his own daughter to cash in on her death.
To the Last Breath is the winner of the 1999 Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
When two-year-old Renee Goode dies unexpectedly at her father's Alvin, Texas, home in 1994, her mother, Annette, immediately suspects murder. Shane Goode, Annette's ex-husband, is her first and only suspect. When the medical examiner labels the cause of Renee's death as unknown, Annette's mother, Sharon Couch, calls in an Orlando pathologist who performs a new autopsy on the exhumed corpse and rules the death a homicide. Stowers (whose Careless Whispers won the 1987 Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime book) describes Shane's crushing debt, his $50,000 insurance policy on Renee and his prior insurance fraud, but does not portray him in substantial psychological depth. Since both crime and punishment are foregone conclusions, it's the soap-operatic aspects of the story that will hold readers' interest--with a powerful grip. At the time of the trial, Sharon Couch's son was serving a 10-year sentence for a killing arising from a childish prank. While assisting on her son's case, Sharon discovered a talent for detective work, and she eventually became a licensed PI. Sue Dietrich, the police detective who picked up the case when the file nearly went cold, had also lost a child about Renee's age. Meanwhile, Dietrich's philandering ex-husband, Brazonia County's star prosecutor, was assigned first chair in the case. Author Stowers knows good material when he sees it. He doesn't pump up his prose with bravado or obvious characterizations, but takes full advantage of the web of coincidence, allowing the players to speak for themselves and the complex plot to spin out. The result may lack suspense, but it has more than enough melodrama for a grade-A movie-of-the-week. Photos not seen by PW.
