Murder Thy Neighbor (ID True Crime Book 4) (2024)

This was an audio book. The narrator did an extremely good job differentiation each person. You never truly know what drives some people to murder another human being. My review is simple, if you are interested in true crime I recommend this book. James Patterson wrote this extremely well and for me the narration made it seamless.

James Patterson submits a vast array of books to be published under his name, some of which are highly successful, while others appear to be less than stellar. Truly, his collaborators shape the content, crafting ideas before the Patterson name is affixed. He has a knack for developing great non-fiction content, and this is another collection of two true crime stories with impactful themes. Working with Max DiLallo and Aaron Bourelle, Patterson presents two cases that will leave the reader hooked and working up an appetite for more, as there is nothing mediocre here.

Murder Thy Neighbor (with Aaron Bourelle): Ann Hoover enjoys her community and takes pride in her home. However, when Roy Kirk buys the home next door, she soon finds herself filled with rage. Roy is a house flipper and strives to earn more on his investment with a little fixing up. These DIY projects are not quick, turning things into an eyesore and junk heap. As Ann tries to reason with him, Roy becomes less and less responsive, assuring her that he is on it. When push comes to shove, Ann takes Roy to court in hopes of lighting a fire under him. What follows is a gruesome retaliation that will stun everyone, the police included.

Murder IRL (With Max Dilallo): Jenelle Potter is highly social, but has issues connecting with people in front of her. She much prefers social media, where she regularly posts photos and waits for others to ‘like’. With overprotective parents, Jenelle has few opportunities to meet others, but when she meets Billy, she has flutters in her stomach. Doting on him, Jenelle can see this going somewhere, but someone forgot to tell Billy about it. When Jenelle no longer feels Billy is interested in her, she decides to take action in the only way she can. Turning to online posts, Jenelle turns social media into her means of retribution. When it bleeds into real life, things take a dire turn and Billy faces more than a painful smear campaign.

Another great collection of true crime stories. The authors work well to string together two gripping tales, pulled from the headlines. While they differ greatly, both stories are intriguing in their own way and keep the reader on the edge of their seat. Giving a decent amount of backstory, the stories build effectively and offer twists and turns throughout. In true Patterson fashion, the chapters are short and effective, pushing things along and keeping the reader flipping pages, if only to discover the truth behind each of these crimes. Both Bourelle and DiLallo have a long history with Patterson, showing their superior writing abilities here and providing the reader with something great and disturbing in equal measure. Dark and chilling, this is another great read that help me pass some time before embarking on a new and exciting reading adventure.

Kudos, Messrs. Patterson, Bourelle, and DiLallo. True crime seems to be your bread and butter!

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Terrible Dick and Jane style prose. Cases written as redundancies and with context of a 3rd grader. No more by this author. Not for me. Trite simplistic copy pushed out fast for sell profits.

Wow...I don't watch too much crime tv so I was not familiar with any of these cases. It's horrible how some minds work! Both tellings of the crimes that happened were well written and engaging. I listened to this book and didn't stop it once! I won't say the story was fantastic (because of the truth factor-ness of it!) but how it was told was fantastic!

This was a decent crime read featuring 2 different cases. It’s presented and written so well, without repetition or meandering on, so it would have been hard to not get into it.

Murder Thy Neighbor
The latest installment of Murder is Forever, includes this insane story. My mouth was hanging open for 90% of this story. Murder Thy Neighbor tells of the feud between neighbors Ann Hoover and Roy Kirk. Roy has bought eight fixer-upper homes in a very short amount of time. Given the state of disrepair, he bought the houses for rock bottom prices. Being a newly licensed contractor, he's beyond excited to start doing all this work. Ann is grateful that someone has finally bought the derelict home attached to hers. Roy seems to be just the man for the job. Soon he becomes the Home Owners Association's President, and soon after he begins cancelling their meetings as his "work" ceases to a halt.

Ann has tried countless times to give him contacts to help move his work along. She even paid to have the front porch worked on so the front of the houses would match. But Roy's leaky roof becomes a problem when it begin leaking into her home as well. This begins their feud. Roy begins leaving heaping piles of trash and various tools and equipment in the front yard. The trash becomes a rat haven, which results in Ann losing work, as she is an in-home piano instructor.

Ann finally offers, as a last attempt, to buy Roy's home and fix it up herself. She offers to pay exactly what he paid for it, so he won't lost near as much money. She just wants this eyesore removed from the neighborhood. She wants her safe haven back. When this doesn't work, she finally takes Roy to court. Here, he is fined $50,000, stripped of his contractor's license, and ordered to get the work done in a timely fashion. But that isn't what he plans on doing.

He has another idea. All he needs is sledgehammer, a hacksaw, and a few trashbags.

Murder IRL
Man, this story tripped me out too.
I'll try to keep this review shorter because according to my husband, this is the longest story I've ever told him. So, here it goes!

Jenelle is nearly 30 years old when her family moves from Pennsylvania to Tennessee. She's never really been popular, especially with her intellectual disabilities. Her favorite past-time is scrolling through her Facebook friends' endless posts. Soon, a local drugstore clerk befriends her. Tracy takes Jenelle to meet some of her friends, when Jenelle falls head over heels in love with Tracy's brother Billy. Her Facebook friend list grows, and her confidence does too. She finally has a group of friends to spend time with, she even has a boyfriend, Jamie.

During a BBQ with her new friends, Jenelle notices Billy with another girl. When she spies them holding hands and kissing, she demands to leave the party. As she logs into Facebook that night, she has a mission. Find Billie Jean Hayworth's page and befriend her. Then the cyber-bullying attacks start. Jenelle can't imagine what Billy sees in Billie Jean. A variety of fake accounts begin posting horrible rumors about Billy and Billie Jean, and shouting praise for Jenelle, all in the same post.

Jenelle uses this virtual harassment as a way to manipulate her parents and boyfriend into believing her side of the story. She not only created fake profiles to attack her crush-turned-enemy, but she created a CIA persona to encourage her parents and boyfriend to protect Jenelle at all costs.

Whatever it takes, her daddy is going to protect her.

Reviews for this entire series can be found at A Reader's Diary!

Edit: Gut instinct said to look into both cases to see if James Patterson did them right or not. Short answer is no and that this reads more like Bart Simpson bullsh*tting his way through a book report.

The true crime audio and ebook selections available through my library leave much to be desired and I saw the ID logo and said what the hell, why not. The result was one fascinating neighbor wars case and the second case a cluster of dipsh*ts who kept out-dipsh*tting each other until two people were murdered. Thanks to Goodnight Sugar Babe and The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia, my tolerance for small town ignorance was quite low, and anyone unfamiliar with those two documentaries might think the Jenelle Potter case was some nonsense written by a tabloid. Thankfully this was a speedy read that only required little more than a lunch break to finish.

Another book I forgot to review. Have been on an intens reading spell. Having had so much luck picking great books. A lot of great non fiction but also some good fiction.

This is my first book by this author . He has a very pleasant and easy to read writing style. It´s ajoy to get into his stories and I am definitely going to read one of his many fiction books. What I do not like however is he is making up how the victims are feeling at various times and for me that is anon no in a true crime book. Let´s not make it fiction.

The first story is about the case of Ann Hoover and Roy Kirk. As an avid true crime reader i was surprised I had not heard anything about this case because it is quite shocking. You would think it would be discussed on various websites but if it did i missed it.

Ann Hoover

The second story is about an infamous case of nasty Jenelle Potter and her crazy ass parents.
This is a story that angers me too much and hating to read about it a second time (I read Pretty Too Live which I gave 2 stars) and I still did not enjoy reading it.

Let's give attention to the victims:
Billie Jean Hayworth and Billy Payne

Photo@ : Tracy Greenwell

All in all for me a 3 star book.

Another "True Crime" double header from the inordinately prodigious, vigorous pen of James Patterson...The opener dealt with owners of a duplex rowhouse that has a neighbor bringing a lawsuit against the other owner for creating a dump out of half the duplex and the second was about a strange 29 year old woman, addicted to social media who plans a murder against a couple who she envisions attacking her through social media...Quick okay read!

This was a super fast book to read. The story wasn't deep. Rather, it seemed sort of simple. All in all, it was an okay book. The second book, Murder in IRL was also about killing neighbors and the buildup to the murder.

If I hadn't known better, I've have thought that this was fiction. God, there's some sick people out there.

I'm not into Patterson's other books/series as I am with the ID series of true crime. In general, I'm a true crime fan and Patterson is one of few that can pull off true crime well.

It was interesting. Ironically, I had recently seen these cases on a streaming episode of the series "Fear thy neighbor", one of my favorite series to stream. However, as we all know...Haha...the book is always better than the movie! I just wish I had known it was in book format before I streamed it! But, that happens when you overkill one genre...or are so aware of true crime so much through streaming, podcasts, or reading other books from various perspectives. I will continue to read his ID series. The cases are some of the most interesting, yet not necessarily the most well known!

Very interesting true crime stories. Two books in one.

Wow a nice tidy little story about a feud between two neighbors. This will teach you to never buy an attached house...

I like James Patterson's versatility in writing. That made me consider him an inspiration in writing when I was young and stupid. Now that I am older and wiser, I apologise to my older self for making a silly mistake and misleading it to date. This is the reason I picked this book ... actual crime?! Why not. I thought the book has gone deeper into crime investigation than what JP does in fiction. But it was a disappointment. I DNF this one. The book has two crime stories, but by the time I was done with the first one, I had decided to burn it (goodness, it's paperback. Otherwise, I would have donated that Kindle).

Ann Hoover is a lovely woman, but she hates her neighbour. Ten months ago, Roy Kirk moved in next door, and now his house is in a great state of disrepair, and Kirk himself has turned sullen and hostile. When Ann sues him, Kirk will retaliate in a gruesome, horrific manner. When Kirk appeals and they are supposed to turn up in court for the appeal hearing, they don't. The judge knows something is wrong and orders the police to check it out.

Roy kills Ann and commits suicide inside the police car while being taken down to the station. And that's the end of the story. No investigative insight, nothing earth-shattering, nada!

I did not like anything about this book.

Okay SO, I have refused to read any book "by" Patterson up until this point (his empire of ghostwriters irks me to no end) BUT I decided to give this book a try because, why not?

I LOVED this book. I read it in one sitting, only pausing for bathroom breaks. This isn't like most of "Patterson's" books, it's a nonfiction true crime thriller. I read another review here that said something along the lines of "well, you can zone out to a Netflix true crime documentary for 3 hours or zone out to this book for 3 hours, so you might as well read a book", and that assessment is spot-on. This book didn't make me a better person or ask me deep questions but, as a huge fan of true crime documentaries, the ID True Crime series is officially my new guilty pleasure. I'm currently placing holds on all the rest :D

This book is sitting on my shelf BUT Soccer started back up yesterday and that means audio books on my multi hour trips.

Yay for Libby!

Ok this is one of my top 2 fav books in the discovery id series. (The other is Murder Beyond The Grave).

Case 1: Murder over the state of ones house/ being held accountable to not owning a dump.

Case 2: Jealousy

These were some wild murder cases!
My only complaint is that someone in case 2 clearly had some type of psychological issue that was mentioned but the diagnosis was never given. 🤔 I wanna know so I’m gonna have to play detective online and see what I can find.

These books are excellent in paper and audio version.

Author publishing books too quickly and stories reflect rapid production.

Pretty good read. First story is better than the second.

Patterson does not seem to do near as good of a job writing true crime novels as pure fiction. This book had two stories in it the first, "Murder thy Neighbor," was about a run down duplex. One side was bought and renovated by a woman named Ann, while the other stayed a mess. Finally someone, named Roy, bought it and he bought it for the purpose of renovating it to sell for a profit, but weeks go by and he makes things worse by filling the yard with garbage. So Ann finally decided after trying other things decided she had to take Sam to court. The second called "Murder IRL," was simply a mess. If the book had been by most any author besides Patterson and one or two others, I would have not finished it. The main character in the book was about a 29 year old woman who still lived with her parents and was treated and controlled by her parents (mainly the father) as if she were a pre teen.

I found the fact that James Patterson had novelised true crimes really intriguing, which encouraged me to buy the book.
James Patterson brings to life people and stories you might only hear on the news in a way you expect from fiction. This was a new concept for me but I was quickly immersed by the flow of the stories, the way characters became real and the way the outcomes were written.
I've always been a fan of James Patterson's fiction and this different approach was very enthralling but I almost feel a bit ghoulish as they were real people who were murdered and I feel like I've got some kind of weird enjoyment from reading about it.

This book was about two different stories between neighbors that ended in murder. The first was about a run down house and the people that brought a lawsuit against their neighbor and the second was about a strange family whose 29 year old daughter planned a murder against a man who paid no attention to her.

Every now & then I dabble in the salacious true crime pool. This time it worked out swimmingly 🤓The first case involves a neighbor from hell and the second involves an extremely disturbing young woman who takes Facebook a little too seriously. Both were batsh*t crazy and I tore through this. I need more ASAP. God I love October reading 🖤

This book has to contain the two worst pieces of writing that James Patterson ever associates his name with. Who can take 2 true stories and make them not only uninteresting but unbelievable? It seems Patterson is so busy trying to rack up sales he sells out and let's copywriters do the writing

Read up to page 182. Did not care for the story.

Another scary look into the chance that trying to be a good person might bite you in the butt. Some people are totally nuts and will murder you with the smallest provocation.

“Murder IRL” is insane. It blows my mind knowing it’s real.

This story captive my attention at the first page to the unbelievable shocking last page of this book....While reading this true crime twisted book, I was intrigued, I read it in less than an hour....

I was so disgusted by Roy Kirk.... He was so twisted and disillusional. Ann Hanover tried so desperately hard, trying everything to help him fix his house, she even offer to buy it. She also asked the Neighborhood Homeowners Association and the other neighbors to help but unfortunately it was too late by the time she took him to court.

James Patterson is an excellent story teller....as you read any of his books, you are naturally compelled to be moved by his work!!!! Highly recommended.

YIKES! Crazy af!

Finished this in one day! Couldn’t put it down! Some intriguing yet scary true crime stories!