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    Dead by Sunset
    Dead by Sunset
    Dead by Sunset
    Audiobook20 hours

    Dead by Sunset

    Written by Ann Rule

    Narrated by Richard Ferrone

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    From bestselling author Ann Rule comes the true story of Bradly Morris Cunningham, the handsome and successful entrereneur who married five different women and destroyed each of them.

    The author of eight New York Times bestsellers, Ann Rule first won nationwide acclaim with The Stranger Beside Me, about serial killer Ted Bundy. Her Crime Files volumes, based on fascinating case histories, have assured her reputation as our premier chronicler of crime. Now the former Seattle policewoman brings us the horrific account of a charismatic man adored by beautiful and brilliant women who always gave him what he wanted...sex, money, and even their very lives.

    When attorney Cheryl Keeton's brutally bludgeoned body was found in her van in the fast lane of an Oregon freeway, her husband, Brad Cunningham, was the likely suspect. But there was no solid evidence linking him to the crime. He married again, for the fifth time, and his stunning new wife, a physician named Sara, adopted his three sons. They all settled down to family life on a luxurious estate. But gradually, their marriage became a nightmare...

    In this gripping account of Cheryl's murder, Ann Rule takes us from Brad's troubled boyhood to one of the most bizarre trials in legal history, uncovering multiple marriages, financial manipulations, infidelities, and monstrous acts of harassment and revenge along the way. Dead By Sunset is Ann Rule at her riveting best.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSimon & Schuster Audio
    Release dateMar 8, 2011
    ISBN9781442343030
    Dead by Sunset
    Author

    Ann Rule

    Ann Rule wrote thirty-five New York Times bestsellers, all of them still in print. Her first bestseller was The Stranger Beside Me, about her personal relationship with infamous serial killer Ted Bundy. A former Seattle police officer, she used her firsthand expertise in all her books. For more than three decades, she was a powerful advocate for victims of violent crime. She lived near Seattle and died in 2015.

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    Reviews for Dead by Sunset

    4/5

    240 ratings9 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Another good book by Ann Rule. It is more like a documentary in that she covers all the information, introduces all the characters, then weaves all the information into a story. The story starts at the beginning so you really get to understand the characters and doesn’t stop until the very end so you find out we hat happens to each character. The only thing that find disturbing is how our justice system allows people to commit such terrible crimes and get away with it for years, tax evasion, corporate, theft, and more. Then the tax payers have to pay exorbinate amounts to prosecute.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Great book. I've always love a good Ann Rule book. Made for t.v. movie was good too.
    • 5/5
      Thorough, detailed, and engrossing. I didn’t want to stop listening.
    • 4/5
      Ann Rule's Dead by Sunset is the tragic tale of Cheryl Keeton, a highly-skilled attorney in the Pacific Northwest, her adoration for her three sons, and her justified terror of her husband Brad Cunningham, who was the prime suspect for her brutal murder on September 21, 1986.In Rule's usual impeccable style, she traces the upbringing, lives, and personalities of the characters in the book until they become three-dimensional, and so alive that you either stand with them or against them. In all the true crime writing I've read, I have never hated an accused killer the way I did Brad Cunningham. His relentlessness, his narcissism, the way he treated his wives and his children, his lies, his abuse, his manipulations, and his rage and violence all made me feel physically ill. This was a man who was cruel for the sheer love of cruelty, a father who used his sons as pawns, a husband who did not know how to love, only to charm, and how to draw women into his web and from there control ever interaction they have with the world. I was frightened for much of the book for like many women, I have lived with an abuser, and some of the story made me remember things long pushed out of my mind or intentionally forgotten.Dead by Sunset is an extremely good true crime book, probably Rule's best. Her research is excellent as is her presentation. I wish she were still alive so she could write more stories and expose more murderers for what they are.
    • 5/5
      Dead by Sunset is a book about karma I loved it.Ann Rule is such a great writer she really makes the story come alive.It really makes you think about what really lurking in the heart of people no matter how attractive they are
    • 5/5
      Spellbinding could not stop listening till the vet end. Another Anne Rule winner.
    • 5/5
      Dead By Sunset is another great true crime story by Ann Rule. It begins on a Oregon highway where a van with blood-spattered windows and an empty infant seat is stalled crosswise in the left-hand lane. The dead woman inside leads to ex-husband Brad Cunningham, a man who is rich handsome intelligent and charismatic. Rule then goes back to Brad's childhood, including his turbulent relationship with his parents before returning to the events that took place after Cheryl's death. Brad was married five times before the age of 40, but had serious control issues with everyone he met. I actually listened to this as an audiobook, though I did read the original book and watched a Made for TV movie back in the 90's. It takes the Oregon police years to solve the crime but this book is written in a way that makes each part of the investigation interesting. That's a difficult thing to do when the reader knows who the murderer is from the beginning. No one wrote true crime books like Ann Rule and I am sad that there won't be any more new ones from one of the best in the business.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      Charming Brad Cunningham likely killed his 4th wife Cheryl in 1986. They had three sons, and were in the midst of a divorce and custody battle. Brad was an abuser. He was eventually convicted via circumstantial evidence. I listened to an abridged audio. I usually don’t like abridged (and I still wonder why they bother! Why not just narrate the entire book!?), but they did this one well. I usually notice when information is skipped or missed, but I didn’t notice this time while listening – it wasn’t obvious. I only suspected because it was much shorter than I expected. That being said about the audio, it kept my attention pretty much the whole time. It was all circumstantial evidence that convicted Brad, but a whole LOT of it! Because it was written in 1995, just after Brad was originally convicted, I had to look up online if he’d been released since. I’m also curious how his sons are doing. At the time the book was written, it sounded like they were well-cared for, but I still wonder what kind of influence he had on them (hopefully, not much, in the end).
    • 4/5
      Extremely heart-breaking true-crime read--as terrible as the story was--still riveting.