Book #71 of 2021:We Keep the Dead Close: A Murder at Harvard and a Half Century of Silence by Becky

Book #71 of 2021:We Keep the Dead Close: A Murder at Harvard and a Half Century of Silence by Becky CooperStruck by a lingering campus legend that she heard as a Harvard undergrad, author Becky Cooper began digging into the forty-year-old unsolved murder at its heart, sorting the facts from the mythic stature they’d acquired, following up on dusty leads, and after a further decade of effort, eventually prodding the police department to carry out new DNA testing and announce a suspect. The ultimate answer is far more mundane than the stories that generations of students had furtively passed along — many concerning a ritual slaying and a sinister professor who is still on staff today — but this book is as much about the life of those tales and the writer’s investigative process as it is about who actually killed Jane Britton.Cooper raises several possible culprits as she walks readers through what she’s learned, and while I’m not necessarily convinced that that’s the most effective structure for this sort of true crime title, it gives valuable space to the whisper networks that surround these men, of female colleagues and junior scholars quietly raising red flags and warning one another not to be alone with them. They may not be murderers, yet they are still abusers entrenched in a patriarchal system of power and protected by an academic institution that heavily discourages a closer look. There’s no way of knowing whether justice could have been any swifter here, and no evidence that detectives were actively blocked from performing their due diligence, but all the same, it’s hard to imagine any of this coming to light before the modern #MeToo era.I feel somewhat let down by the end of this work, and I’m not sure if that stems more from the relative dullness of the solution — an unavoidable peril of nonfiction — or the way in which it’s presented and contrasted with the scintillating possibilities earlier on in the narrative. I also wish Cooper would explore her personal feelings of possessiveness over the case, especially how she bristles at other amateur sleuths with no weaker a claim on it than her own. But she’s kept me engaged and interested throughout, and I’m grateful that she’s finally helped find closure for everyone involved.[Content warning for rape and graphic violence.]★★★★☆–Subscribe at https://patreon.com/lesserjoke to support these reviews and weigh in on what I read next!–Find me on Patreon | Goodreads | Blog | Twitter -- source link
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