Title: At Any Cost
Author: Rebecca Rosenberg and Selim Algar
Publisher: St. Martin’s Press
Release Date: April 6, 2021
Pages: 297
Book Source: Hardcover
“Wealthy, beautiful, and brilliant, Shele Danishefsky had fulfillment at her fingertips. Having conquered Wall Street, she was eager to build a family with her much younger husband, promising Ivy League graduate Rod Covlin. But when his hidden vices surfaced, marital harmony gave way to a merciless divorce. Rod had long depended on Shele’s income to fund his tastes for high stakes backgammon and infidelity–and she finally vowed to sever him from her will. In late December 2009, Shele made an appointment with her lawyer to block him from her millions. She would never make it to that meeting.
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Two days later, on New Year’s Eve, Shele was found dead in the bathtub of her Upper West Side apartment. Police ruled it an accident, and Shele’s deeply Orthodox Jewish family quickly buried her without an autopsy on religious grounds. Rod had a clear path to his ex-wife’s fortune, but suspicions about her death lingered. As the two families warred over custody of Shele’s children—and their inheritance— Rod concocted a series of increasingly demented schemes, even plotting to kill his own parents, to secure the treasure. And as investigators closed in, Rod committed a final, desperate act to frame his own daughter for her mother’s death.
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Journalists Rebecca Rosenberg and Selim Algar reconstruct the ten years that passed between the day Shele was found dead and the day her killer faced justice in this riveting account of how one man’s irrepressible greed devolved into obsession, manipulation, and murder.” – Amazon
Kim’s Review
**
While reading At Any Cost by Rebecca Rosenberg and Selim Algar, I stopped so many times to read passages from the book out loud and express my outrage to my husband. As I kept reading, I just couldn’t believe the events that were happening, it was like something from a soap opera, a really messed up one. I know sociopaths and victims of domestic abuse act like this, but the books or movies I consume are usually fiction. At times I couldn’t believe At Any Cost was non-fiction.
Writing this review a day after finishing At Any Cost, I still have disbelief and anger running around in my thoughts. There are so many instances that I want to share with you so we can both go on about how crazy it was, but I don’t want to spoil that for you. I will say what Rod tried to get first his son and then his daughter to say about what family members did, and how Debra continued to stay with Rod, still has me fuming.
And don’t get me started on how the courts try to keep kids with their parents as much as possible. It takes a village to raise children, and there are times that the village should not include one or both of the parents. Plus there’s the fact that so many religions and cultures deem a woman only worthy upon her looks and if she has children. If Shele hadn’t been feeling the pressure that her time to marry/have children was almost up, there’s a good chance she wouldn’t have rushed to marry Rod. With all the various social, religious, and economical issues in At Any Cost, I think it would make a fantastic discussion for a book club.
Okay, I’m done with my rant. If you enjoy true crime, At Any Cost is one you need to read.
**
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