Bitter Blood
A True Story of Southern Family Pride, Madness, and Multiple Murder
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4.3 • 65 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
The “riveting” #1 New York Times bestseller: A true story of three wealthy families and the unbreakable ties of blood (Kirkus Reviews).
The first bodies found were those of a feisty millionaire widow and her daughter in their posh Louisville, Kentucky, home. Months later, another wealthy widow and her prominent son and daughter-in-law were found savagely slain in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Mystified police first suspected a professional in the bizarre gangland-style killings that shattered the quiet tranquility of two well-to-do southern communities. But soon a suspicion grew that turned their focus to family.
The Sharps. The Newsoms. The Lynches. The only link between the three families was a beautiful, aristocratic young mother named Susie Sharp Newsom Lynch. Could this former child “princess” and fraternity sweetheart have committed such barbarous crimes? And what about her gun-loving first cousin and lover, Fritz Klenner, son of a nationally renowned doctor?
In this tale of three families connected by marriage and murder, of obsessive love and bitter custody battles, Jerry Bledsoe recounts the shocking events that ultimately took nine lives, building to a truly horrifying climax that will leave you stunned.
“Recreates . . . one of the most shocking crimes of recent years.” —Publishers Weekly
“Absorbing suspense.” —Chicago Tribune
“Astonishing . . . Brilliantly chronicled.” —Detroit Free Press
“An engrossing southern gothic sure to delight fans of the true-crime genre. Bledsoe maintains the suspense with a sure hand.” —The Charlotte Observer
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This book recreates a complex case that claimed nine lives, one of the more shocking crimes of recent years. The links in all the deaths were Susan Lynch and her cousin Fritz Klenner, each from a prominent, upper-middle-class Southern family. The murders began with the shootings of Lynch's ex-mother-in-law and ex--sister-in-law in Kentucky, and continued with the slayings of her parents and grandmother in North Carolina. What connected the killings was the bitter divorce between Susie and her husband Tom, and the impending custody battle for their children, particularly since it became increasingly clear that Susie regarded the boys as pawns in a power struggle. The deaths that she prepared for her two sons, and which inadvertently killed her and Klenner as well, provide a dramatic climax to this account of families too blind to realize that well-bred folk can be dangerous. Bledsoe wrote an award-winning series about the case in 1985 in the Greensboro (N.C.) News & Record. Photos not seen by PW. BOMC, QPBC and Mystery Book Club alternates.
Customer Reviews
Like A Trainwreck
A great read, couldn’t put it down and had to read it twice! It was like a train wreck; something you don’t want to see but you don’t want to look away from. The story is as real as it gets, sadly. A horrible realization of what child custody does to people and how the children are nothing more than pawns in the game.