Things Aren't Right

The Disappearance of the Yuba County Five

Non-Fiction - True Crime
325 Pages
Reviewed on 11/29/2024
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Author Biography

Tony Wright is the author of Things Aren’t Right: The Disappearance of the Yuba County Five. He's the author of two comic books and a graphic novel with Source Point Press. Tony is an archivist, father, husband, and a lost soul of rock and roll. When he is not writing, he is spending time with his family or enjoying a trip to the library. Tony has been featured as a Yuba County Five case expert on the Mopac Audio podcast Yuba County Five, the Motor Trend TV show Auto/Biography: Cold Case, and the hit Netflix series Files of the Unexplained.

    Book Review

Reviewed by Anne-Marie Reynolds for Readers' Favorite

Things Aren't Right by Tony Wright is the true story of 'The Disappearance of the Yuba County Five.' In February 1978, a group of five men headed off to a basketball tournament in Sacramento. One had schizophrenia, while the others had other intellectual disabilities. They never made it home. Four days after they left on their trip, their car was discovered abandoned on the mountainside in the snow, in the wrong direction from their homes. Four months later, the remains of four of them were discovered 12 miles away from their car, one of them in a US Forest Service trailer – the fifth has never been found. There was enough fuel and food to last for months, so what happened? Unsolved to this day, the case continues to baffle everyone. Why did the men end up in the Plumas National Forest, and what really happened during those fateful days?

Things Aren't Right by Tony Wright is the stunning, strange story of the disappearance of five men. This book is incredibly well-written, clearly thoroughly researched, and it goes into great detail but it's a true crime story with a difference. Instead of being solely about the investigation into the disappearance, this book tells their individual stories. Each man is brought to life, no longer just names on a page, but real people with real lives and their own unique personalities. The photos of all five men help with that, too. The story also delves into the investigation in detail, diving into the official case files and backed up with plenty of interviews while offering many theories as to what might have happened to force them so far off their route home. Lastly, it examines how the families of the men were impacted by what happened. This is the perfect book for anyone who loves true crime stories, especially unsolved cases.