This is really hard to rate, because the experience of reading it was so unpleasant. It's one of the only books I can remember that's made me actually consider putting it aside because it's too much for me, and I'm a fairly intense reader of horror. I truly think that if not for the interview with the author at the back, this might have been unrateable for me. But Ketchum makes the argument that he chose first person narration because he wanted us to be complicit in watching the story unfold; that our passive consumption of a horrifying crime is not dissimilar from that of the main character. This was a real crime, and this is how it happened, and now we're reading about it for pleasure. In making that uncomfortable truth so obvious, Ketchum succeeds. 

The unpleasantness of the content means that I barely remember thinking much either way about Ketchum's writing, but it was good. He drew really realistic characters, without which the story may have been too nasty. And he evoked a time and place that felt familiar and nostalgic, even though I've never stayed long in New Jersey, and missed the fifties by about seventy years.

The fact is that I'll never recommend this book to anyone and I probably won't read it again, but I can't argue that it was really effective. Ketchum made his point, unrelentingly and hard. For that, I have to admire it.