How long does it take to read You Belong to Me?
and other true cases
You Belong to Me by Ann Rule takes about 8 hours 27 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 8 hours 27 minutes
A week or two of reading
First published 1994. 461 pages, about 126,775 words.
17 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 14 hours 5 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 8 hours 27 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 5 hours 17 minutes |
The page count is the median across 1 edition, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
Take the title story, "You Belong to Me." In this 192-page thriller, the wife gets the tee shirt, or at least its message in time and divorces her psycho policeman-husband. She lives in fear of him, is stalked by him, has her home invaded by him, has her phone tapped by him. Then he is finally arrested--not for stalking his ex-wife--but for the murder of a woman he had stopped for a traffic violation. "Black Christmas"--A loner commie-hater kills the wrong family, believing they're Communist (wrong) Jews (wrong). The manner of death is particularly macabre. This is going to be the worst Christmas story you've ever read. "One Trick Pony"--A beautiful cowgirl doesn't get her tee shirt in time, and is murdered by her alcoholic husband. He almost gets away with it, but continues to have bad luck with the women in his life. One of his girlfriends is shot in the stomach and her death is ruled a suicide even though "when the police got there they found Russ standing next to the dead woman, the gun in his hand." "The Computer Error and the Killer"--The author included this case because she thinks that "it demonstrates how charming and benign the sadistic sociopath can be when he wants to appear that way." A monster slips through the cogs of the criminal justice system and kills again and again. "The Vanishing"--A teenager who is about to go on vacation to Hawaii vanishes under strange circumstances. As the author states, "No one of us who searched for her could ever have guessed what [the teenager's] ending would be. Of all the possibilities, the truth was one that no one ever considered." "The Last Letter"--Mistresses are suckers for unrequited romance. According to "The Last Letter," one of the unhappiest endings to a love story features a husband who actually divorces his wife and marries his long-time mistress.
Subjects: Murder, Case studies, Murder, united states
