Blood Will Tell

A Shocking True Story of Marriage, Murder, and Fatal Family Secrets

By: Carlton Smith

Narrated by: Donna Postel

They Were The Perfect Family....

For twenty years, Ken and Kristine Fitzhugh and their two sons had lived lives of comfortable middle-class normality in the university town of Palo Alto, California. Then came the shocking news that Kristine Fitzhugh was dead, the victim of a terrible accident.... By the time the Palo Alto Police Department looked closer at the death of Kristine Fitzhugh, there could be only one conclusion. Someone had murdered Kristine in her own home, inflicting a series of horrific blows to the back of her head, and then cleaned up the mess to make it look like an accident. Who would do such a thing? Protesting his innocence, Kenneth Fitzhugh was arrested and tried for the murder of his wife. And as the case progressed, one by one, the hidden secrets of the Fitzhugh family came spilling out....

©2003 Carlton Smith (P)2017 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.

Great book audio!

One of the best I've followed! Very well-written and it's quite obvious the author has researched the whole incident so well and thoroughly. Plus, I enjoyed the narration! So well done, start to finish! Thanks!

Too long

This is a great story that is well told. But…unnecessarily long. The characters’ back-stories went back to the 1800s, and added nothing to the actual story.

Forensics and trial with a twist of like

Usually procedural true crime is so tedious and boring, and it can read as lazy on the writer's part given that court transcripts and proceedings readily exist. But for a novel that was mostly forensics and the trial proceedings, this book was excellent. If you're completely put-off by blood spatter analysis and can't tell a defense attorney from a district attorney, skip this. But if you want a cerebral listen with A MAJOR WEIRD REVELATION IN IT, get on this!

Oh, and the narrator is superb. Let her narrate every true crime book, please.

Just average.

Not bad, just boring. I expected much more. It wasn’t terrible, but the author made the HUGE mistake of telling the ending in her first chapter. So you know throughout whole book where the story is going. That’s a fatal mistake in a book like this, and I really can’t understand her thinking there. Narrator was very good. Exceptional really.

good

I did appreciate the story however at times keeping everyone straight was a bit confusing. Its a tragic event and all because of greed and selfishness! I will never understand why some think it's better to murder than share!

Slow, Repetitive & Boring

Being a true-crime addict I had heard of this case, had listened to podcasts and had watched crime news shows about it, so I was very familiar with the story and looked forward to listening to this book. I found it disappointing, as it was unnecessarily long, with characters’ back-stories going waaaaay too far back (especially secondary characters of less importance), which added nothing to the telling of the story and just gave a bunch of irrelevant details. Even though I knew the story, I think it was a mistake on the part of the author when he gave the outcome of the case right off the rip in the beginning. It was more than foreshadowing, it was like telling the story backwards and jumped too much back and forth between present and past.

Hard to get through

I really enjoy listing to Donna Postel and I’m addicted true crime but this is truly the most difficult book I have ever listened to. Way to much dead space that wasn’t necessary and again difficult to get through. Save your credits and find a better read

Slow Paced

I love true crime books. This audio book, however; was slow-paced, repetitive, and at times excruciatingly boring. So much background info on the defendant's family members, and just an enormous amount of unnecessary details that add nothing to the story line. I would pass on this one.