Never Enough

My order arrived to me here in Manila, the Philippines, thank you, and it is in good condition. Thank you for a very good service, I will order again. Very satisfied here.

I am a career Non Fiction reader. Mr. McGinniss has truly written a "who done it"............he keeps you guessing; wondering; predicting and looking forward to the next chapter!

Why? Why did handsome multi-millionaire Robert Kissel refuse to leave his screaming, threatening, out-of-control wife Nancy, when she was telling everyone how much she hated him and wanted him dead? After bashing in his skull and wrapping up his corpse in a carpet, this wife-from-hell then thought she was home-free to inherit her dead husband's millions that would support her and her trailer-park paramour in high style. Author Joe McGinnis does an outstanding job of bringing to us this horrific murderess who steps out of one's worst nightmares of feminine lunacy. The long-suffering victim, Robert Kissel, comes across as someone pathetically naive when he waived away the pleas of his friends to get rid of his killer wife. Even when his wife was poisoning him, he refused to give a private investigator hair samples to be tested for poison. "Perhaps I'm too hard on my wife," he explained. Poor idiot. The story really becomes hilarious when Nancy hobbles into court for her trial, doubled over in pretend pain as she prepares to tell the court how she was just a poor battered wife who finally snapped. As the true story really shows, her husband was the one who withstood mental and physical abuse from the killer for years. Nancy's favorite lie was to tell everyone that her terrible husband was forever breaking her ribs and beating her to a pulp and raping her at every chance. Yet, doctors found no injuries on her. This still didn't prevent Nancy Kissel from continuously breaking down on the stand into convulsive sobbing marathons. She wailed to everyone how she was only trying to protect herself when she murdered her demonic husband who was forever trying to rape and torture her. The prosecution brought out the facts that she was never abused or raped and that just prior to murdering her husband, she had fed him a deadly drink laced with five different drugs. Nancy Kissel comes across as the most horrific of the current gallery of fake abuse victims. McGinnis writes that while she tried to come across in the courtroom as the terribly beaten up victim of abuse, frail and cringing, she was heard and seen shrieking at her attorneys as to how they should present her case. Another fascinating facet of this fascinating tale is that Robert Kissel's brother, Andrew, was tortured and murdered a year later by persons unknown. Tolstoy couldn't dream this up.

Joe McGinniss has researched and written more than a "fair share" of true crime books. FATAL VISION and BLIND FAITH (just to mention two of his best)literally immerse the reader "inside" the events as they unfold and unravel. Here again in NEVER ENOUGH the author has succeeded in throughly researching and presenting a compelling and tragic story of two murders in the Kissel family (son Robert Kissel's premeditated murder by his spouse resulting in a Hong Kong trial and conviction; "brother" Andrew Kissel's unresolved murder in Greenwich, Connecticut). Reading this book is like bearing witness to a great unraveling of "a perfect marriage",a tragic end to personal financial success beyond comprehension and the disintergration of a family. A story as quoted by the author (and attributed to philosopher/author Joseph Campbell) of "midlife crisis"...climbing to the top rung of a ladder and finding that it was placed against the wrong wall! This book is well worth reading. Chances are you will not put it out of your mind for a long time. Very thought provoking.

Like a fast moving train, unable to get off until you reach your destination. Joe McGinniss is the true master of true crime. Avarice, murder and money combine for a dark tale but in McGinniss' hands they make for an American ex-pat story without comparison. Grisham's "The Innocent Man" pales in comparison...in fact there is no comparison. I was up until the wee hours finishing "Never Enough." But it should not be at all surprising that the writer of "Fatal Vision" and "Blind Faith" has done it again and I only hope he does it again.

Robert and Nancy Kissell were part of the American expatriate colony living in Hong Kong. Robert, an ambitious hard-driving investment banker, led an intense career that took him on frequent business trips all over Asia. His wife Nancy's extremely materialistic lifestyle kept her daily in the high-end shopping malls of Hong Kong. Their marriage deteriorated as the pressures of their high-powered lifestyles grew. The resulting bizarre death of Robert Kissell and his wife's arrest for his murder culminated in a sensational trial in Hong Kong. Author McGinniss has once again written a masterpiece of the true crime genre. His ability to describe seemingly complex subjects (e.g. investment banking, Hong Kong expatriates) in concise and clear prose is like seeing a powerful spotlight illuminate an object in the dark. McGinness' latest approaches "In Cold Blood" in its exploration of the dark side of a highly dysfunctional marriage. It represents the continuing growth of a true crime master author.