In the Middle of the Night

The Shocking True Story of a Family Killed in Cold Blood

By: Brian McDonald

Narrated by: Patrick Lawlor

The affluent suburb of Cheshire, Connecticut, seemed like the perfect place for Dr. William Petit and his wife, Jennifer Hawke-Petit, to raise their two lovely daughters.... Until July 23, 2007, when, according to police, two ex-cons invaded the Petit home hoping to embark on a routine robbery - one that would ultimately prove deadly.

©2009 Brian McDonald (P)2017 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.

Marginally better than Don Kline

I’m not sure if there are budget constraints in the true crime audiobook space or if they really just don’t care how very bad the narrators are that are used. I simply refuse to purchase a book narrated by Don Kline and I’m sad to say Patrick Lawlor is only better by the slimmest of margins. If it weren’t for a compelling case, I’d return this title.

Pass on this one

What an amazing story worthy of a great book. However this is not much more than a boring history of Joshua. Too bad.

Too many details, made it boring and hard to stay

I had a hard time keeping my interest. Too many details making it feel like the author was just dragging the storytelling out, making it uninteresting after a short while of reading it.

Book is very out of date, no updated appendices.

Very interesting story overall. Well researched background material on characters. But comes off a little to sympathetic regarding the murderers. Almost as if the Author is naive to the lies a sociopath can tell. Joshua was an intelligent and smooth liar. (Eg: Joshua wanted to be an army sniper, and convinced the author that he excelled in his military skills. Yet Joshua held a Marksman badge --a minimal qualification. A soldier must achieve an Expert badge to even be considered for sniper training, and possess extraordinary self-discipline, indefatigable perservance and personal self-government to succeed in sniper training. No one who would desert his service could ever hope to achieve sniper status).

never got to the actual story

This is probably one of the worst books I've ever listened to. The book focused solely on the lives of the Killers and not the actual story of the victims in what happened. The book only spoke about 5% of the actual crime itself and 95% on the lives of the killers and how they grew up. Totally not interested at all.