Let's get the bad news out of the way first. Jerry Bledsoe's "Bitter Blood" is a bloated doorstop of a book -- 573 pages of often-superfluous information about the family trees of several of the characters (complete with detailed biographies of the forebearers) and replete with observations by bystanders (again with biographical material) who are at best secondary and at worst totally irrelevant to the story.

Now. Having said that, if you can wade through the impedimentia, there's a helluva story there. It starts -- as all good true-crime stories do -- with a murder. A wealthy, rather unpleasant woman and her adult daughter are found slain in their isolated Louisville, Kentucky home. Months later, a man and wife and her mother are also slain in their home at Winston-Salem, North Carolina. The only link between the victims turns out to be two little boys whose father was part of the Kentucky family and whose mother was part of the North Carolina contingent.

Sounds like a slam-dunk, doesn't it? Especially when you factor in a bitter custody dispute between the boys' now-divorced parents, and the presence of a randomly wacko cousin with a penchant for guns and a habit of going around telling people he's a CIA assassin but they mustn't let anyone know.

Unfortunately, the law-enforcement personnel involved in the separate investigations remain unaware of the connection. Even when surviving members of the North Carolina clan point the finger at one of their own, the investigation doesn't take off. And when the forces of justice do finally lumber into action, things move far too slowly for the boys' father, who is certain that his children are in deadly peril at the hands of their mother -- who is either losing her grip on reality or is a world-class liar.

It all comes together in a bizarre attempt to take the mother and her cousin / probable lover / gun-toting survivalist into custody, the action becomes a tangled mess of multiple law-enforcement agencies who either can't communicate at all or who send garbled and incorrect information. It might be funny, but it's not.

Even after the dust has cleared (literally) and the case appears to be closed, Bledsoe devotes another hundred pages to the aftermath. And he can be forgiven that apparently unnecessary verbiage because there were still important facts to be uncovered, a dozen or more damaged people trying to comprehend how people they loved and thought they knew could become so dangerously unbalanced, and law officers whose lives were also irrevocably changed by the case.

If you choose this book, settle in for a long haul. Overall, it's worth the time. ( )

Fascinating true story of the murders involving 2 wealthy, prominent families in Kentucky and North Carolina. ( )

The true story of Susie Sharp Lynch and Fritz Klenner and how they tore apart their families in Kentucky and North Carolina in the 1980s. The tale of 9 murders- but who was behind them? Susie, Fritz or both? ( )

good and interesting ( )

This book tells the facts as they are, and not the ones we want to hear. This is not a negative for a true account book, just that it is a terribly sad set of facts. Bitter Blood covers the story of a family entrenched in the traumatic events of multiple murders within their family by two of their own. It is chilling. ( )