"I bought this book because I like a good “true crime” now and then, but that’s not what I got. Or, I did get the true crime I was hankering after, but I got a heck of a lot more as a bonus. I remember the story of Richard Sharpe. The media had a hay day with the fact that Sharpe was a known cross-dresser. They seemed to want to connect the murder he committed to his inclination to dress. I remember thinking that was just plain wrong. DeFruscio, who is the electrologist of preference for many crossdressing and transgendered people, really brings that home too. Which is not to say that she advocates that we should all like Sharpe. That’s not her purpose at all. In fact, it’s clear that she didn’t always like him herself. There were lots of times she didn’t take his calls for weeks on end and didn’t visit him for months on end—because he was downright exhausting. He was truly a genius whose mind never turned off, but he was also truly mentally ill. I’m not sure whether his mental illness was a result of childhood abuse or genetics or something else, but getting into his head, via the author, was incredibly interesting—and often very scary. Luckily the reader gets into DeFruscio’s head too, and that is not a bad place to spend time. She is quirky sometimes in her thinking but she is also generous, funny, vulnerable, unassuming and highly observant. To read Cornered is to understand how she came to offer Sharpe her support when others turned their back on him. This is a fascinating book and I highly recommend it."