by Amber Hunt
First published 2014
Tyler Hadley bludgeons his parents to death with a hammer in their Florida home. The seventeen-year-old then posts on Facebook inviting friends to a party at his house. Dozens of teenagers arrive for what seems like an ordinary suburban gathering. Tyler moves through the crowd, acting normal while Mary Jo and Blake Hadley's bodies lie in the master bedroom. Late in the evening, Tyler pulls his best friend Michael aside and confesses what he has done. Michael refuses to believe him until Tyler leads him to the bedroom where the corpses wait on the floor. Award-winning journalist Amber Hunt reconstructs this shocking crime, exploring how a teenager could commit such violence then celebrate with their victims nearby. She examines Tyler's troubled psychology and his apparent fascination with the Menendez brothers, who murdered their own parents. The book reveals how Tyler's dark jokes about killing on social media masked deadly serious intentions that his parents failed to recognize.
Genres: crime, non-fiction, psychological-thriller, true-crime
Vibes: dark, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: dark-academia, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Florida
Period: 21st-century
288 pages · Mass Market Paperback · St. Martin's True Crime
Content warnings: murder, violence