...Instead of merely recounting the events of the case, Drews pulls the readers into the story and into the 1980s heyday of running. While reading the book I had the strongest urge to don a terry-cloth headband, a pair of gym shorts with white piping, and a pair of athletic knee socks with the strips at the top! You see, the reason Drews is able to pull you in with such vivid detail is because she was there. Pam Bulik was Lynda Drews' best friend...

....The fact that the characters in this true story are runners may be incidental. But the book reads like a fast-paced marathon, the end of which is never certain but is worth all the pain and emotion that gets you there.

Green Bay author Lynda Drews has authored an intriguing entry into the active field of True Crime writing with Run at Destruction. Making the work remarkable, and therefore of high interest is Drews’ intimate and personal knowledge of the details of the true story of a questionable death in Green Bay.

Run at Destruction: A True Fatal Love Triangle
Lynda Drews. Titletown, $15.95 paperback (372p) ISBN 9780982000922
Runner and longtime Green Bay, Wis. resident Drews revisits the mid-1980s death of her close friend and fellow runner, popular high school teacher Pam Bulik. She chronicles the small community’s response to Pam’s death, suspicions of suicide that rang false, and the subsequent naming of Pam’s husband, Bob Bulik, as the primary suspect. Events, including Bob’s alleged affair, drag readers through the gruesome and tawdry details, some difficult to read (especially in descriptions of the victim). Like Melanie Thernstrom’s The Dead Girl, about the life and tragic death of her best friend, this title also relies on the strong bond between author and victim for emotional weight; passages about their shared moments, and Drews’s feelings of emptiness in the decades since, are remarkable. (Aug.)