Review: Shattered Silence: The Untold Story of a Serial Killer's Daughter

Shattered Silence: The Untold Story of a Serial Killer's Daughter by Melissa G. Moore
My rating: 0 of 5 stars

Very intriguing book. For those who may be planning the read, be aware of a couple of things.

1) The story is about Melissa's life. It is not a telling of her father's. Although she obviously covers that ground, those portions are superficial in detail (with regard to his activities) and focused more on the reflection of what kind of a man he is and either her relationship or perceived relationship with him as she learned more over the course of her lifetime. If you are looking for a book that discusses details of his crimes, that is not covered in any depth here.

2) As you may expect, there ARE references to animal torture/killings that she witnessed or experienced during her childhood at the hands of her father. I include that notation for those who, like me, wish there were trigger warnings/rating systems to identify cases where animals are harmed before stumbling across them unknowingly. While these episodes in the book (there are just about a half dozen or less), she is careful to tell you enough to understand its impact on her as a child but not detailed enough to make you throw the book against the wall screaming and sobbing. For this, I am appreciative. Those limited details, as she relays them, give you the vision of the monster she saw with little understanding where it came from or what they foreshadowed, but she skirts through it swiftly enough to allow you to move forward without severe trauma to yourself as a reader. If the limited description is still too much, skipping ahead a mere couple of sentences (as I did a few times) is enough to continue without taking the images too deeply to heart (long term).

For those who are interested in this memoir, it is well written and you get a rare glimpse of what it was like for her as a child, living in an impoverished environment, surrounded by dysfunction, much of which she didn't understand or even know until later years. You will feel her discomfort, her questions, her fears just as you will see her strength, her confidence, and her self begin to develop as she matures.

As someone who spent many years studying criminal pathology from high school age through and past my college years, leading me to obtain a degree in Psychology, I considered (for a long time) pursuing a career as in forensic psychology. Despite a change in career path, the field has and will continue to fascinate me. That intrigue is what drew me to this book and I am glad I picked it up.

View all my reviews