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Type of bind: Mass Market Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 364.15230976431
EAN num: 9780061230875
ISBN number: 0061230871
Label: Harper
Manufacturer: Harper
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 384
Printing Date: July 01, 2008
Publishing house: Harper
Release Date: June 24, 2008
Sale Popularity Level: 26338
Studio: Harper
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Product Description:
Bright, attractive, and both from good families, University of Texas college student Colton Pitonyak and vibrant redhead Jennifer Cave had the world at their beckoning. Cave, an ex-cheerleader, had just landed an exciting new job, while a big-money scholarship to UT's prestigious business school lured Pitonyak to Austin. Yet the former altar boy had a dark, unpredictable streak, one that ensnared him in the perilous underworld of drugs and guns. When Jennifer failed to show up for work on August 18, 2005, her mother became frightened. Sharon Cave's search led to Colton's West Campus apartment, where Jennifer's family discovered a scene worthy of the grisliest horror movie. Meanwhile, Colton Pitonyak was nowhere to be found.
A Descent Into Hell is the gripping true story of one of the most brutal slayings in UT history—and the wild 'Bonnie and Clyde-like' flight from justice of a cold-blooded young killer and his would-be girlfriend, who claimed that her unquestioning allegiance to Pitonyak was 'just the way I roll.'
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Rated by buyers -
I read the author's other book about the serial rapist and the wife about a week ago and was blown away with the authors writing style
I don't read many true crime except for an ocasional Ann Rule book.
Enough about me, Kathryn Casey is the type of writer that can take a story with hundred's of facts, details, characters and make you really "feel" the whole experience and drama without getting lost or bored. I only bought this book on the strength of reading one of her other stories just to see if it was just a fluke that what I read was her best writing. Well, this book topped that book.
I RARELY/NEVER shed a tear reading books. What can I say, I'm a man. I actually shed a tear 2 times and semi-cried one time reading this story. I'm glad I was alone because my wife would of thought I was losing it.
I plan on reading all of her stories now. If you read True Crime either casually or often READ THIS BOOK.
Rated by buyers -
This story is so heartbreaking and the crime so repellent that I wasn't sure I wanted to read it. The writing is so superb though, that I couldn't put it down. The author brings the people involved to life. Any book by this author is well worth the money. I hope she continues to write since I know have all her books.
Rated by buyers 
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Many of the preceding reviews .... "a page turner" and "can't put it down" may be trite but are on target. The setting here is the main campus of the University of Texas at Austin. Jennifer Cave, a wayward but nice girl from Corpus Christi, TX is brutally murdered. The perp is an equally wayward but decidedly not nice quiff from Little Rock, AR Carlton Pitonyak. There is a sense of dread early on. The reader may quickly realize that something horrible will happen to poor Jennifer. A relentlessly negative portrayal of both UT and the city of Austin amplifies this effect of impending doom. The later part of DH deals with how- or if- the spinning wheels of justice will close in on Carlton. Authoress Casey definitely maintains reader interest far into DH, even throughout Carlton's trial. Many such proceedings are cut and tried affairs in true crime land, but not here. This reader was waiting for Carlton's lawyer to pull a rabbit out of a hat. There are 2 minor sidebars to DH: The very first is that Casey manifestly became very close to the Cave family, perhaps a tad too much so. The second is that the trail of justice actually crosses the Rio Grande into Piedras Negras, Mexico! This reviewer was reminded of the quandary faced by John Wayne in "Rio Grande". How does the Law deal with that pesky flowing border? The bottom line is that "A Descent into Hell" is a winning true crime tale and a perfectly save choice for aficionados. This reviewer is compelled to state that the "Ann Rule Rule" is once again in effect. The centerfold photos and especially the back cover reveal too much. Readers should ignore both until finished with the text.
Rated by buyers -
but this is one of the best true-crime books I have ever read. Almost any standard we could use to typify the genre is at work here, redoubled: the mashalling of hundreds of little facts of college-student life and leisure at the mammoth main branch of the University of Texas (Austin); the precision with which the characters (and their background) are drawn; the feel of each town the characters live in; and the psychological pressures and doubts that even the minor characters face in this complex, but enthralling real-life drama.
Best of all, IMHO the conclusions to be drawn from DESCENT INTO HELL are honestly won, based on factual detail and without attitudinizing on author Kathryn Casey's part. Never did I get the feeling that the shy, late-blooming college student at the center of this book had been "broken" from surviving a divorced household, for example; nor did I feel that the promising business student turned drug-dealer was doomed by virtue of his upper-middle-class upbriging. This is a truly fascinating saga that Casey has wrestled into readable form, and without trading on easy stereotypes. An intelligent book that will make its readers feel more intelligent as well as thoroughly engrossed.
One aspect of this book that has largely escaped attention is the manner in which modern state "megaversities" are administered, if that's the word. San Marcos State Teachers College held only a few hundred students when Lyndon Johnson got his degree in the 1930s; by the turn of this century, at the time the victim in the book studied there briefly, it had changed its name to "Texas State University" and held over 27,000 students. With over fifty thousand students, U. Texas' crown jewel and the setting for most of this book's plot, the Austin campus, offers a bewildering variety of choices for the undergraduate/consumer. Nearby, main avenues are loaded with pricey boutiques and restaurants; on dingy side streets all manner of illicit drugs are available, from pot and $3-per-pill Ecstasy to prescription painkillers, even heroin.
Nowhere did I get the notion that some interested and non-related adult was on hand to suspect the incipient pathology of the book's killer. Not a tenured faculty member, dean's assistant or college counselour figures into the story, probably because so many "best and brightest" State U. campuses have evolved such efficient mechanisms to keep the professoriate away from the undergrads. I'm not saying that if a little bit of in loco parentis had been there, the murderer would have been stopped ahead of time; but I was struck by the number of people whose acquaintances consisted of several "gangs" (including at least one literal gang) of non-overlapping young adults. I can't help thinking it's a pity.
Rated by buyers 
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The things wrong with this book:
1. The title. I mean, A Descent into Hell? Really? It sounds like a title that the Lifetime TV movie people rejected as too trite. At least Baby Monitor: The Sound of Fear and Ski Lift to Death (hey, look them up if you don't believe me) had some character.
2. The subtitle. "An Altar Boy" and "a Cheerleader"? Need I say more?
3. The pacing. This is a story about a murder, people. Let's at least bring the pacing up to the level of an episode of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. If the narrative had been any slower, I would have had to don my gorilla suit and read the book while marching back and forth across the room to Sousa marches just to keep myself mildly entertained.
4. The editing. I actually started marking the diction and grammatical errors just because it was a lot more interesting than trying to keep my mind on the book. Examples: "disinterested" instead of "uninterested"; getting one's car "out of hock" to mean getting it out of an impound lot ("hock" means you sold it to a pawnbroker, duh). And I've rarely encountered a tin ear for dialog like the one on display here. A representative sample:
"Finally, she grabbed the arm of a young man in a uniform, shouting, 'Is my sister all right?' [At least it doesn't say "alright" -- I'll give the author that.]
'Your sister's dead,' he said, pulling away.
When the man walked by again, Vanessa, sobbing, yelled, 'You don't know how this feels.'
'I do,' he said, more kindly. 'My sister jumped off a mountain in Greece last summer. All I can tell you is it will get better.'"
Uh. HUH. And:
"Vanessa's entire body ached. She'd never felt so alone."
Whoa, ace narrative technique there, Hoss! Maybe soon you can graduate to having one of the subjects of the book drop a family portrait so that the glass in the frame shatters.
5. The blurb by Ann Rule saying, "Kathryn Casey is one of the best true crime writers today." This statement is wrong on so many levels that I won't even bother to deconstruct it, but I will say that either the state of true crime writing is worse than I thought or there's some serious logrolling going on here.
Oh, I know, I know. This is what I get for reading true crime. You're probably right. Now excuse my while I go flip though In Cold Blood to get the taste of this thing out of my mouth.
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