We Keep the Dead Close
2020 • 501 pages
Ratings3
Average rating3.7
15
Ratings3
Average rating3.7
SHORTLISTED FOR THE CRIME WRITERS' ASSOCIATION ALCS GOLD DAGGER FOR NON-FICTION 'Brilliant and extraordinary' Philippe Sands 'Astonishing ... Cooper is one hell of a detective' Alex Marzano-Lesnevich, author of The Fact of a Body 'Seductive ... Haunting' Ariel Levy, author of The Rules Do Not Apply In 1969, Jane Britton, an ambitious graduate student at Harvard, was found bludgeoned to death in her apartment. A whisper network kept Jane's story alive: a rumour of an affair with a professor that ended in tragedy when Britton threatened to expose him. Forty years later, when curious undergrad Becky Cooper first heard the story, she felt compelled to find out more. We Keep the Dead Close is an account of her complex and fascinating investigation spanning a decade.
Reviews with the most likes.
Back then, I was blind to the idea that an institution could still be destructive even if its members were good people.
This book is a doozy: a meticulously detailed self-led investigation of a fifty-year old unsolved murder case, AND an ambitious, wide-reaching commentary on true crime in general, authorial overreach, women in academia, and elite institutions' privileging of themselves over truth/justice. Recommend!
