True-Crime author, Ann Rule, on latest novel -- a Whidbey Island murder mystery
SEATTLE -- Ann Rule, one of the top True Crime best-selling authors in the country, has published her 18th novel, “Practice to Deceive,” a twisted tale of murder and deceit that unravels on Whidbey Island the day after Christmas in 2003. “On the 26th, two women were walking down to the beach and they saw this yellow tracker sitting there with the door open and the dome light on, but it was dark, as it is around Christmas at 5 p.m. in the afternoon," Rule said. "And they thought if it’s still there in the morning, we’ll call someone.” Shortly afterward, another passerby looked inside the vehicle and saw Russell Douglas. He was dead. Police were called to the scene and that began the investigation that spans years and sent detectives all over the country. “He (Douglas) had lived in Freeland with his wife and his two children, but they were separated and he was living at an apartment in Renton. But he had been over for Christmas and detectives went to tell his estranged wife what had happened and she took it so calmly, without an effect at all. And that seemed very strange to them,” Rule said. It was the first of many bizarre encounters in the case and Rule said it’s one the hardest books she’s written. The characters in "Practice to Device" read more like something out of a tabloid. There's a former Miss Washington, Peggy Sue Thomas, married at one time to the millionaire owner of a Kentucky Derby winner, and then there's her former lover, Jim Huden, who once sold software to Bill Gates. (Huden was featured on Washington’s Most Wanted in 2010 as a fugitive when police were looking for him in connection to this case.) The investigation, to some extent, is still ongoing, but Rule’s readers will have no problem joining the trail of clues that lead police through layers of deceit, denial and cold-blooded murder. “It’s a great detective story -- motivation is wicked,” Rule said.