Real Justice

(Copy provided by Netgalley.)

From Goodreads:
"On the night of June 23, 1990, teenage friends Kyle Unger and John Beckett made a last-minute decision to attend a music festival near Roseisle, Manitoba. They were loners, not the popular kids at school. But on this night they seemed to finally fit in. They had fun, played games, drank, and hung around bonfires with other people. The next morning, a sixteen-year-old girl was dead. By the next week, Kyle was charged with her murder. Due to insufficient evidence he was let go, but the Mounties were convinced he was the killer.

They laid a trap, called the Mr. Big operation, for Kyle. With offers of money, friends, and a new criminal lifestyle, the RCMP got Kyle to confess to the murder. But the confession was false -- he had not been the killer. He was convicted and sent to prison.

For the next twenty years Kyle fought for his freedom. He was finally acquitted in 2009.

This book tells the story of an impressionable but innocent teenager who was wrongfully convicted based on the controversial Mr. Big police tactic."

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I believe In Cold Blood by Truman Capote was the first true-crime novel. Capote's writing style was captivating and brought you into the story so far that the effects were chilling. I don't have the guts to read it again, that's for sure.

Real Justice: A Mr. Big Police Sting Goes Wrong didn't give me nightmares at all. It's a well-done plea for social justice, clearly laying out the case for Kyle Unger's innocence and his manipulation by the RCMP. As a non-fiction book, it possess clarity and information and comes straight to the point. As a story, it isn't captivating, but does help the reader see that a few mistakes and a need to impress others really can have negative consequences, as well as demonstrating the catastrophic flaws an unregulated sting can have.

Gentle Reader Alert:  There are some frank discussions of what happened to the victim, including sexual assault, and a couple of f-bombs.