If You Really Loved Me

From New York Times bestselling author of the true crime classic The Stranger Beside Me, “a truly staggering case” (The Washington Post) of murder, family, and a daughter’s love.

David Brown was an entrepreneurial computer whiz, making his first million before age thirty-two. His life seemed perfect.

But tragedy struck when his beautiful young wife was shot to death as she slept. Worse, David’s teenaged daughter, Cinnamon, confessed to killing her stepmother. The young girl was sentenced to twenty-four years to life but in the wake of her conviction, two determined lawmen began their own investigation. Soon, the private, twisted world of David Brown was revealed with horrifying clarity, revealing a trail of perverse love, twisted secrets, and evil mind games.

Featuring Ann Rule’s signature “psychologically perceptive” (Booklist) prose, If You Really Loved Me is a tour de force of true crime reporting and an unforgettable tale about a deadly charmer who almost got away with everything.

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.