Poisoned Dreams: A True Story of Murder, Money, and Family Secrets

by A.W. Gray

Book Overview

An account of the poisoning murder of Nancy Dillard Lyon, daughter of a powerful Texas real-estate tycoon, and the conviction of her husband for the crime provide a chilling look at a sensational case... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0451405064
• ISBN13: 9780451405067
• Release Date: July 1994
• Publisher: Onyx Books
• Length: 384 Pages
• Weight: 0.46 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 4.2" x 6.9"

Customer Reviews

Wild ride among the human animals

As I'm reading this I'm thinking, these people are allcrazy.They have loads of money and they spend it on status flashingand conspicuous consumption. The lie constantly to themselves and those around them. Their behavior is duplicitous and blind, within insight. They use each other and in turn are used. They make a big deal of going to church but have the spiritual sensitivity of hyenas. They do volunteer work for charity but rob each other and society every chance they get. They have the sexual behavior of gutter trash. They do drugs, drink themselves into stupors, and kill one another. And I wonder, am I like that too, except that the circumstances of my life are different? Had I been in their circumstances would I have resembled them?And the answer is, who knows?The scene is the Park Circle section of Dallas where everybody has lots of money. The principals are Harvard design school graduates, but any difference between them and your standard USC grad is not noticeable. The husband either poisons the wife or she poisons herself. The court found him guilty. She's something of a nut case, wallowing in the narco-guilt of a sister-brother incestuous relationship when she was eleven and Bill Jr. was thirteen. Her husband, Richard, a sexual addict (according to her) has a steamy affair with a shallow blonde. Her father has mass bucks and is called "Big Daddy" although he's a bantam of only five-seven. He uses his money to control his family, but of course it all backfires. Bill Jr. takes the cocaine/alcohol cure at the Sierra Tuscon drying out farm and then Richard attends briefly for both sexual addiction and alcoholism, both sent with Big Daddy's money. Nancy, the wife, is semi-frigid, but does get it on at strategic times, enough to be pregnant five times (two miscarriages and an abortion, two kids). Reading between the lines, one might guess that she is a semi-conscious furtive tease. They all abuse one another in various ways. Would I have done the same thing?You know, I think (a) I wouldn't have had the energy and (b) I would rather stay home and read a book, any book. The above was written after reading about half the book. It is amazing how good this book was near the end! Which only goes to show, it's the material that counts. I think Gray was padding it out a little. The truly amazing thing is how inadequate at getting the truth is our legal system. It's a statement about human kind: truth really is just a word: what counts is social, political and economic power. Or should I say forensic truth is a secondary consideration.Poisoned Dreams is written in a quick and slightly dirty style that suggests that Gray believes the dictum from literary agent Evan Fogelman, quoted on page 270, that good writing doesn't count for as much today as it once did. Yet, I wouldn't call this bad, or anything of the sort. What really works for Gray is the story, and he does deliver that. Furthermore, he presents both sides, which is