With One Shot: Family Murder and a Search for Justice

Dorothy Marcic’s family was forever changed With One Shot. In 1970, Dorothy’s uncle Vernie was shot and killed, supposedly by his wife, Suzanne. She got off with an insanity plea and was free within a year. Ms. Marcic decided to put her research skills to work and spent two years discovering everything she could about the crime as well as interviewing most of the people involved, looking for what really happened that night. After compiling all her information, she was able to put this book together to share what she learned and how she arrived at her conclusion.

I am only reviewing this book and not the actual crime that took place. I am very sorry that the author has had so much loss in her life. However, after discovering that Ms. Marcic has her doctorate, has written at least fifteen books as well as many musicals, and is a professor, I was surprised at how this book was written. It felt very disorganized. The copy I was reading was an advanced reader’s copy, but it felt like no one had even proofread it at all. It was abounding with spelling and grammatical errors, and it flowed like thoughts that just pop into your head. Some chapters were only two pages long, others were thirty, and the content would switch back and forth between her investigative process and memories from her childhood and back again.

The case itself is very interesting, but the way it was organized made it very difficult to follow. I would say this book was nothing like an Ann Rule true-crime novel. There is a lot of possibility here, it just needs to be more systematic instead of random. For someone with her skill set, I expected a true-crime story that was more cohesive. So if you are going to read it, I might suggest you wait for a later copy that has seen more editing.