Ann Rule is best known as an excellent writer of true crime books with her most famous work being The Stranger Beside Me about her experiences with serial killer Ted Bundy.
In Possession, she takes a foray into fiction but sticks to the world of cops and pathological murderers with which she is so familiar. Her extensive knowledge of police detectives and attorneys shows in this novel as it is authoritatively detailed on their work and procedures and filled with utterly believable cop talk. It is also obvious that Ann Rule has either spent much time in the great outdoors or is intimately familiar with sources who have as her descriptions of life in the wilderness ring real.
Characterization in Possession is less secure. Interestingly, her best, fullest, and most sharply etched portraits are of the novel’s pathological characters. Lureen Demich, a neglected, physically attractive, none-too-bright, aimlessly promiscuous young woman is rendered believable in terms that are sympathetic without sinking into the maudlin. Her son, serial sex murderer Duane Demich, is made frighteningly in his heartlessness, semi-psychosis, mother-obsession, and addiction to violence.
The other major characters, the decent characters of Danny and Joanne Lindstrom, are less clearly drawn and ultimately not very engaging.
Where the novel falls down is when describing Joanne’s fear and grief-induced confusion, a confusion that leads her to depend on her rapist and ultimately come to love him and be his more-than-willing sex partner. Possession seems to go from a crime novel to a sexual fantasy. The sexual fantasy of a woman becoming passionately enamored of her rapist may be either a male or female fantasy but it simply does not work as Rule presents it.
Possession is an interesting read but it ultimately does not hold together as a novel.
