Review: The Darkest Glare by Chip Jacobs

The Darkest Glare: A True Story of Murder, Blackmail, and Real Estate Greed in 1979 Los Angeles
Author: Chip Jacobs
Publisher: Rare Bird Books
Released: March 9th, 2021
Received: BookishFirst
Warnings: True crime, graphic details

3 kitties

I received a copy of The Darkest Glare in exchange for a fair and honest review.

The Darkest Glare, written by Chip Jacobs is a true crime novel, one that, as the title promises, is full of murder, blackmail, and so much more.

Set in 1979 Los Angeles, this novel dives into a very real series of crimes. It follows Richard Kasparov and Jerry Schneiderman. Two construction workers, by most appearances. But anybody who has spent time reading a crime novel, true or not, knows how deceptive looks can be.

Before I dive into my review, I want to be upfront about something. I don’t typically read true crime novels. It’s not my cup of tea, and in general I have no problem with violence or gore, but when I know it really happened? Then it tends to be too much for me.

Yet there was something about The Darkest Glare that caught my attention. Maybe it was simply because I was able to actually read a sample on BookishFirst – not something I generally get to do with books outside of my preferred genres.

Whatever it was, I wanted to give The Darkest Glare a proper chance, and read it all the way through. Overall, I found it to be a fascinating (yet dark – naturally) read. It wasn’t what I expected, but I consider that to be a positive thing.

One thing that impressed me (but might prove how little true crime I read) is just how much research went into this novel. You can really tell how much work Chip Jacobs put into getting it all together, and it all seems to flow pretty smoothly. There’s no sense of info-dumping, for lack of a better description.

About Liz (AKA Cat)

I am an avid animal lover, photographer, reader, and much more. While my photography blog is feeling a bit neglected at the moment, the other sites I'm involved in are going strong. ✧I review books, comics, and basically anything else in the literary world over at Quirky Cat's Fat Stacks (of Books). ✧I review comics and books, as well as write content for Word of the Nerd. ✧I review comics for Monkeys Fighting Robots. ✧I write content for Screen Rant and CBR. ✧I write book reviews for The Review Crew.
This entry was posted in Non-Fiction, Uncategorized and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s