Helter Skelter by Vincent Bugliosi
Published 1974 · 689 pages · 200,000 words · about 13 hours at an average pace · Mystery & Crime, Nonfiction
How hard is Helter Skelter to read?
Helter Skelter scores 20 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it relatively accessible. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 28 out of 100
- Legal terminology and counterculture references. Accessible prose.
- Sentence structure: 28 out of 100
- Abstraction: 20 out of 100
- Entirely concrete. Facts, evidence, testimony.
- Information density: 55 out of 100
- Extremely dense with evidence, testimony, and procedural detail.
- Narrative indirection: 15 out of 100
- Chronological, evidence-building narrative.
- Symbolic density: 15 out of 100
- Manson as symbol of the dark side of the counterculture.
- Ironic distance: 100 out of 100
- Bugliosi writes with prosecutorial earnestness.
- Resolution withholding: 100 out of 100
- The conviction provides clear resolution.
- Structural complexity: 25 out of 100
- Three parts: the murders, the investigation, the trial.
How Helter Skelter is regarded
Helter Skelter holds a literary regard score of 46 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.