It's nice to once in a while turn from my beloved Ann Rule to a different true crime writer. Joe McGinnis is a very good writer with “Fatal Vision”, “Blind Faith” and “Cruel Doubt” to his credit. I’d read at least the novel “Fatal Vision” before but until I opened this novel about the tragic Kissel family I’d forgotten what a good writer McGinniss is.

Rob Kissel and his brother Andrew were wealthy. Only Rob came by his wealth as an investment banker honestly. Brother Andrew’s claim to wealth was more questionable.

Andrew Kissel would not be of much import for this book beyond that of a family member of the victim. Except Andrew Kissel was himself murdered, like his brother Rob. The reader knows who murdered Rob and it was a killer of the most extraordinary loony tunes in-love-with-herself variety of murderess. The reader does not know who killed Rob’s brother Andrew except it wasn’t Rob’s wife Nancy. She was in jail for murdering Rob when Andrew was killed.

Joe Mcginnis knows his stuff about retail banking. Or else he did a whole lot of research on the matter as well as life in Hong Kong.

For Nancy, Rob Kissel and their children lived half their lives in Hong Kong. It seems there’s a somewhat segregated segment of Hong Kong society that consists solely of American men immersed in the world of investment banking, their wives and children. They live in almost pristine American colonies in grandiose high rises that are fully self-contained and require little interaction with the Chinese world outside the complex.

Nancy Kissel lived in this rarified world. She also lived in the United States. Nancy Kissel and her children straddled two cultures and two continents. During a recent stay in her American home, Nancy Kissel fell in love with a trailer park two-bit blue collar cable guy.

Yes. It’s almost like a Lifetime movie ain’t it?

Obviously Nancy Kissel is a dingbat not worthy of freedom from jail again, forever and ever. For this woman cold-bloodedly fed her husband killing poison then sat around and waited for Rob Kissel to die.

The rest of the McGinniss book deals with the custody of Rob’s children, what with Rob dead and the fine, fine Nancy in Hong Kong prison. Andrew’s wife, Hayley, tried to get custody of the children, hoping as much for their millions left to them by their dead father as from any maternal instinct. This was not going to happen as Hayley and Andrew were getting a divorce. Beyond this, Hayley was naught but an in-law aunt to those children.

McGinniss mentions the murder of Rob’s brother Andrew as part of the book but Andrew’s true crime, his murderer and the story behind it was not the subject of “Never Enough”.

Nancy Kissel has only herself to blame for her life in prison. She killed her husband and the father of her children for the cable guy! Now she doesn’t have a husband, the cable guy, her children or her lifestyle of luxury she once enjoyed.

Read this book yon True Crime afficiandos. If nothing else you’ll get a real hoot out of this cable guy who knew a good thing when he saw it and how he got out when the getting out was good.

Readers will shed no tears for Nancy Kissel, the idiot.


Recommended: Yes