Everything She Ever Wanted: A True Story of Obsessive Love, Murder, and Betrayal

By Ann Rule (Simon & Schuster – First Edition 1992)

Genre: Non-Fiction – True Crime

Via: Library

Pages: 528 (print); 16 discs (audio)

It’s all about the moola in this intense and gripping thriller by the Grande Dame of True Crime, Ann Rule.

The Basics

Scarlett O’Hara Wannabe Pat Taylor Allanson is whatcha might call a “Georgia peach.” Strikingly beautiful with enough Southern charm to knock a mint julep off its feet a mile away, Pat dreams of a Tara-like plantation where she and new hubby Tom can raise horses, grow roses, and float around the highest echelons of Atlanta society. Pat even costumes herself and Tom as Scarlett and Rhett Butler for their wedding photos. Less than two months later, their dream explodes in terror and murder: their beautiful home is mysteriously burned to the ground and Tom’s convicted of the brutal slaying of his mother and father.

And that’s not all.

Readers soon learn that Pat’s only brother died in a puzzling suicide. Tom’s been cut out of his parents’ will. Everything is left to his grandparents.  So Pat stands to inherit everything if she can wrangle her way into the will. Or just bumps off gram and gramps.

Never one to let anyone or anything stand in the way of her delusions of grandeur, Pat cons Tom’s grandparents into moving in with her at Kenwood Morgan Farm under the guise of taking care of them. Their health declines precipitously shortly thereafter. The suspected culprit is arsenic.

And guess who prepares all their meals?

Indeed, no one was safe from this cold-blooded killer when Pat doesn’t get her way. Not her frail, elderly wealthy employers. Not even her own kids. Or grandkids.

It took Georgia lawmen more than two decades to stop her for good — “if indeed they have.”

The Queen

There’s a reason Ann Rule was considered the Queen of True Crime. (She passed away in 2015.) Rule proves her writing chops once again in this fascinating, meticulously researched and completely absorbing account of a heartless, supremely self-centered sociopath who hid behind soft words and genteel manners for decades, leaving a trail of death and destruction in her wake. 

We grabbed Everything off a library shelf for one reason: It filled a slot in the 52 Book Summer  Reading Challenge. Like, Prompt #15: An audiobook that’s 15+ hours long.

Everything is 20 hours on 16 discs.

So there ya go.

Thinking we’d give it a listen during a recent long drive, Her Momness popped Disc 1 into the CD player. “We’ll listen to one disc 1, Kimster. Just to get a feel for the story, okay?”

Just shows you what we know. 

Then, Wham!

As is the case in many of Rule’s books, Everything takes some time to get rolling. That’s because the author is detailed and painstakingly thorough in setting the stage and laying out the back-stories of each individual involved. But once the story gets rolling, it’s wham! Hold on to your hair, peeps. Cuz it’s pedal to the metal from there until the final page. We finished it in just over two days.

Formidable

Rule has a real knack for drawing readers into the story. A formidable talent, she’s an expert at making you feel like you’re sitting right there, witnessing the events she is describing. Julie Andrews-esque, she “starts at the very beginning” and gradually  draws you in as the story progresses. Rule has you on the edge of your seat by the final chapters, waiting for the finale like one of us waits for someone to drop their sirloin steak faster than you can say, “Score!”

Advisory

While superbly written, Rule’s True Crime books are intense. They’re not exactly light reads. In fact, they can be emotionally exhausting. So you may want to pack extra Ghirardelli’s. Just sayin’.

Unsurprisingly, the book was made into a movie. It’s about three hours. The book is humungously detailed and meticulously researched, with deep dives into not only Pat’s background, but over family members, too. And all the tangled relationships spiraling outward like concentric circles in a pond after a pebble’s been tossed into it.

Cuz that’s pretty much how Pat operated.

Just a few of the things left out in the movie that appear in the book include Pat’s admission to a psychiatric hospital and being prescribed anti-psychotic drugs. Using a wheelchair when she visits Tom in jail. Pat’s festering wounds that appear to be self-inflicted. Her omnipresent suicide threats. Her Academy-Award worthy Helpless Southern Belle performances wherein she’s ever and always hovering on the rim edge of death. How she “operates on Perry Mason plot lines” and wreaks havoc on/hamstrings her husband’s defense. How uber spoiled, mega willful, super self-centered and “strangely secretive” this chick is.

A Piker

As manipulative as the day is long and then some, Pat makes Scarlett O’Hara look like a piker and systematically destroys pretty much everything and everyone she touches. Two (2) Afterwords update and wrap up this thoroughly absorbing, chilling story of expert manipulation, unbridled avarice, and naked evil.

So there’s a lot in the book that’s not in the movie. And vice-versa. (For example, Pat’s romance with the wheelchair-bound horse dude is a total fabrication. Not in the book.) Otherwise the flick would be like, a week long. So consider the movie the ‘Cliff Notes’ version of the book. You get a lot more depth and scope in the book. But if you don’t have 20 hours and don’t mind a slimmed-down version, the movie might be a good option.

Here’s the trailer:

 

Have you read any Ann Rule?

Our Rating: 4.5