'If I Did It' not worth the read

“If I Did It: Confessions of the Killer” with exclusive commentary “He Did It” from the Goldman Family c.2006 / 2007, Beaufort Books. $24.95, 256 pages, plus commentary from The Goldman Family, prologue from Pablo F. Fenjves, and afterword by Dominick Dunne

BY TERRI SCHLICHENMEYER
DAILY SOUND CORRESPONDENT

No doubt that you’ve watched enough television in your life to know that when a murder is committed, the police are overjoyed if the accused is arrested, the judge is sympathetic, and the case is wrapped up quick and clean.
Nobody expects the controversy over a case to span more than a decade and into two centuries. No one could predict that the accused would continue to be front-page news years after the trial was over.

But then, nobody ever expected a book like “If I Did It: Confessions of the Killer” with exclusive commentary “He Did It” from the Goldman Family.
You’d have to have been living beneath a good-sized rock or in a thirteen-year coma to avoid knowing about the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman, the subsequent arrest and trial of former football star O.J. Simpson, and the media hoo-hah that went with it all.
Understanding that, I won’t re-hash it for you.
But Simpson does. First, though, he makes you endure over a hundred pages of incessant who-cares remembrances of his first date with Nicole, the years they spent living together, their happy marriage, and the short time that it took for the marriage to disintegrate.
Overall, Simpson lightly admits that he’s not perfect, but he blames Nicole Brown Simpson for most of their problems.
In his opinion, he was supportive and gave her everything she ever wanted. His is a story of a marriage gone sour, mostly because of a wife gone over the edge. This overly-cautious fanny-covering and finger-pointing is tedious, and certainly no reason to read this book.
Well past the halfway point, however, “If I Did It” takes a turn that’s chilling. Although the words “truthfully” and “if I can be honest with you” pop up many, many times throughout Simpson’s manuscript — which gives it a memoir-like tone — the story abruptly switches gears with one almost-blithely-written sentence:
“Now picture this — and keep in mind, this is hypothetical….”
Simpson goes on to describe a murder straight out of a Movie of the Week, with a vicious loss-of-consciousness slaying and a cold-blooded cover-up. Following his “scenario,” Simpson’s narrative switches back to largely documented, provable but somewhat novelized true happenings.
Guilt or innocence aside (since that’s not the debate here), is this book worth reading?
No. I don’t think so. It took incredible chutzpah all around to write this book, but you’ve already heard it all. Chances are, no novelized confession or “exact replication of the original” manuscript is going to sway you either way, particularly given the current charges against Simpson in Las Vegas.
In their foreword, the Goldman family explains what it took to get this controversial book to print and their decision to publish it.
In his afterword, author Dominick Dunne explains why he supports Ron Goldman’s family.
If supporting them is your target, too, then by all means, shell out twenty-five bucks for this book.
For everyone else, though, if you’ve been coherent over the last 13 years, you’ve already read it.