Catch and Kill by Ronan Farrow

Catch and Kill
Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators
by Ronan Farrow

Published: 2019
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Genre: True Crime, Feminism
Hardback: 464
Rating: 5
Goodreads

First sentence(s):
The two men sat in a corner at Nargis Cafe, an Uzbek and Russian restaurant in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn.

In 2017, a routine network television investigation led Ronan Farrow to a story only whispered about: one of Hollywood's most powerful producers was a predator, protected by fear, wealth, and a conspiracy of silence. As Farrow drew closer to the truth, shadowy operatives, from high-priced lawyers to elite war-hardened spies, mounted a secret campaign of intimidation, threatening his career, following his every move, and weaponizing an account of abuse in his own family.

All the while, Farrow and his producer faced a degree of resistance that could not be explained--until now. And a trail of clues revealed corruption and cover-ups from Hollywood, to Washington, and beyond.

This is the untold story of the exotic tactics of surveillance and intimidation deployed by wealthy and connected men to threaten journalists, evade accountability, and silence victims of abuse--and it's the story of the women who risked everything to expose the truth and spark a global movement.

Both a spy thriller and a meticulous work of investigative journalism, Catch and Kill breaks devastating new stories about the rampant abuse of power--and sheds far-reaching light on investigations that shook the culture.

My two-bits:

Totally engrossing thriller aspect to this investigative reporting story.

~*~
* part of October monthly theme: True Crime, Hunger, Horror, Harassment

She Said by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey

She Said
Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story That Helped Ignite a Movement
by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey
Published: 2019
Publisher: Penguin Press
Genre: True Crime, Feminism
Hardback: 320
Rating: 5
Goodreads

First sentence(s):
In 2017, when we began our investigation of Harvey Weinstein for the New York Times, women held more power than ever before.

For many years, reporters had tried to get to the truth about Harvey Weinstein's treatment of women. Rumors of wrongdoing had long circulated. But in 2017, when Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey began their investigation into the prominent Hollywood producer for the New York Times, his name was still synonymous with power. During months of confidential interviews with top actresses, former Weinstein employees, and other sources, many disturbing and long-buried allegations were unearthed, and a web of onerous secret payouts and nondisclosure agreements was revealed. These shadowy settlements had long been used to hide sexual harassment and abuse, but with a breakthrough reporting technique Kantor and Twohey helped to expose it. But Weinstein had evaded scrutiny in the past, and he was not going down without a fight; he employed a team of high-profile lawyers, private investigators, and other allies to thwart the investigation. When Kantor and Twohey were finally able to convince some sources to go on the record, a dramatic final showdown between Weinstein and the New York Times was set in motion.

Nothing could have prepared Kantor and Twohey for what followed the publication of their initial Weinstein story on October 5, 2017. Within days, a veritable Pandora's box of sexual harassment and abuse was opened. Women all over the world came forward with their own traumatic stories. Over the next twelve months, hundreds of men from every walk of life and industry were outed following allegations of wrongdoing. But did too much change--or not enough? Those questions hung in the air months later as Brett Kavanaugh was nominated to the Supreme Court, and Christine Blasey Ford came forward to testify that he had assaulted her decades earlier. Kantor and Twohey, who had unique access to Ford and her team, bring to light the odyssey that led her to come forward, the overwhelming forces that came to bear on her, and what happened after she shared her allegation with the world.

In the tradition of great investigative journalism, She Said tells a thrilling story about the power of truth, with shocking new information from hidden sources. Kantor and Twohey describe not only the consequences of their reporting for the #MeToo movement, but the inspiring and affecting journeys of the women who spoke up--for the sake of other women, for future generations, and for themselves.

My two-bits:
Per the title of this book, women are in the forefront of the telling of the stories within.

Loved how solidarity and truth prevailed.

~*~
* monthly theme: True Crime, Hunger, Horror, Harassment

The Fact of A Body: A Murder and a Memoir by Alexandria Marzano Lesnevich

The Fact of A Body
A Murder and a Memoir
by Alexandria Marzano Lesnevich
narrated by author

Published: 2017
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Genre: Memoir, True Crime, Mystery
Hardback: 326
Rating: 5
Goodreads | Website

First sentence(s):
The boy wears sweatpants the color of a Louisiana lake.

Before Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich begins a summer job at a law firm in Louisiana, working to help defend men accused of murder, she thinks her position is clear. The child of two lawyers, she is staunchly anti-death penalty. But the moment convicted murderer Ricky Langley’s face flashes on the screen as she reviews old tapes―the moment she hears him speak of his crimes―she is overcome with the feeling of wanting him to die. Shocked by her reaction, she digs deeper and deeper into the case. Despite their vastly different circumstances, something in his story is unsettlingly, uncannily familiar.

Crime, even the darkest and most unsayable acts, can happen to any one of us. As Alexandria pores over the facts of the murder, she finds herself thrust into the complicated narrative of Ricky’s childhood. And by examining the details of Ricky’s case, she is forced to face her own story, to unearth long-buried family secrets, and reckon with a past that colors her view of Ricky's crime.

But another surprise awaits: She wasn’t the only one who saw her life in Ricky’s.

An intellectual and emotional thriller that is also a different kind of murder mystery, The Fact Of a Body is a book not only about how the story of one crime was constructed―but about how we grapple with our own personal histories. Along the way it tackles questions about the nature of forgiveness, and if a single narrative can ever really contain something as definitive as the truth. This groundbreaking, heart-stopping work, ten years in the making, shows how the law is more personal than we would like to believe―and the truth more complicated, and powerful, than we could ever imagine.

My two-bits:

Whoa! the connections and coincidences.

Along with being a mystery (of sorts), I liked reading about the growth and journey of Alexandria.

fyi: the story continues...

Ricky lost another appeal for freedom this past June. In September, it was announced the he is appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court to try to get his conviction thrown out.

~*~
* listened to the audio version

* monthly theme: True Crime, Hunger, Horror, Harassment

Savage Appetites by Rachel Monroe

Savage Appetites
Four True Stories of Women, Crime, and Obsession
by Rachel Monroe

Published: 2019
Publisher: Scribner
Genre: True Crime
Hardback: 272
Rating: 5
Goodreads
Website

First sentence(s):
Until a few years ago, Oxygen was a cable TV channel that targeted a young, female demographic with forgettable high-drama shows with names like Last Squad Staanding and Bad girls club.

Zombie sighting:
"We used to do zombies and vampires, but that's going nowhere. It's all true crime now."
-chapter 1, page 6

In this illuminating exploration of women, violence, and obsession, Rachel Monroe interrogates the appeal of true crime through four narratives of fixation. In the 1940s, a bored heiress began creating dollhouse crime scenes depicting murders, suicides, and accidental deaths. Known as the “Mother of Forensic Science,” she revolutionized the field of what was then called legal medicine. In the aftermath of the Manson Family murders, a young woman moved into Sharon Tate’s guesthouse and, over the next two decades, entwined herself with the Tate family. In the mid-nineties, a landscape architect in Brooklyn fell in love with a convicted murderer, the supposed ringleader of the West Memphis Three, through an intense series of letters. After they married, she devoted her life to getting him freed from death row. And in 2015, a teenager deeply involved in the online fandom for the Columbine killers planned a mass shooting of her own.

Each woman, Monroe argues, represents and identifies with a particular archetype that provides an entryway into true crime. Through these four cases, she traces the history of American crime through the growth of forensic science, the evolving role of victims, the Satanic Panic, the rise of online detectives, and the long shadow of the Columbine shooting. In a combination of personal narrative, reportage, and a sociological examination of violence and media in the twentieth and twenty-first century, Savage Appetites scrupulously explores empathy, justice, and the persistent appeal of violence.

My two-bits:
Fascinating look into five women's lives (including author) that portray different angles of the True Crime genre.

side note: Reading about Frances Lee Gessner triggered my interest in the world of miniatures.

~*~
* monthly theme: True Crime, Hunger, Horror, Harassment

I'll Be Gone In The Dark by Michelle McNamara

I'll Be Gone In The Dark:
One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer
by Michelle McNamara
narrated by Gabra Zackman

Find out more about this book and author:
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Published: February 2018
Publisher: Harper
Genre: Mystery, True Crime
Hardback: 352
Rating: 4

First sentence(s):
Before the Golden State Killer, there was the girl.

Zombie sighting:
Zombies were scientifically implausible.
-Afterword, page 317

For more than ten years, a mysterious and violent predator committed fifty sexual assaults in Northern California before moving south, where he perpetrated ten sadistic murders. Then he disappeared, eluding capture by multiple police forces and some of the best detectives in the area.

Three decades later, Michelle McNamara, a true crime journalist who created the popular website TrueCrimeDiary.com, was determined to find the violent psychopath she called "the Golden State Killer." Michelle pored over police reports, interviewed victims, and embedded herself in the online communities that were as obsessed with the case as she was.

I’ll Be Gone in the Dark—the masterpiece McNamara was writing at the time of her sudden death—offers an atmospheric snapshot of a moment in American history and a chilling account of a criminal mastermind and the wreckage he left behind. It is also a portrait of a woman’s obsession and her unflagging pursuit of the truth. Utterly original and compelling, it has been hailed as a modern true crime classic—one which fulfilled Michelle's dream: helping unmask the Golden State Killer.

My two-bits:

Interesting to see the aspects of this story through various character perspectives. The meticulous research and attention to details throughout reaches ever so close to the killer.

~*~
* listened to the audio version

* part of R.I.P. 13 (here)

The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson

The Devil in the White City:
Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America
by Erik Larson
narrated by Tony Goldwyn

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Published: 2003
Publisher: Crown
Genre: History, True Crime
Hardback: 447
Rating: 5

First sentence(s):
The date was April 14, 1912, a sinister day in maritime history, but of course the man in suite 63-65, shelter deck C, did not yet know it.

In The Devil in the White City, the smoke, romance, and mystery of the Gilded Age come alive as never before.

Two men, each handsome and unusually adept at his chosen work, embodied an element of the great dynamic that characterized America’s rush toward the twentieth century. The architect was Daniel Hudson Burnham, the fair’s brilliant director of works and the builder of many of the country’s most important structures, including the Flatiron Building in New York and Union Station in Washington, D.C. The murderer was Henry H. Holmes, a young doctor who, in a malign parody of the White City, built his “World’s Fair Hotel” just west of the fairgrounds—a torture palace complete with dissection table, gas chamber, and 3,000-degree crematorium.

Burnham overcame tremendous obstacles and tragedies as he organized the talents of Frederick Law Olmsted, Charles McKim, Louis Sullivan, and others to transform swampy Jackson Park into the White City, while Holmes used the attraction of the great fair and his own satanic charms to lure scores of young women to their deaths. What makes the story all the more chilling is that Holmes really lived, walking the grounds of that dream city by the lake.

The Devil in the White City draws the reader into a time of magic and majesty, made all the more appealing by a supporting cast of real-life characters, including Buffalo Bill, Theodore Dreiser, Susan B. Anthony, Thomas Edison, Archduke Francis Ferdinand, and others. Erik Larson’s gifts as a storyteller are magnificently displayed in this rich narrative of the master builder, the killer, and the great fair that obsessed them both.

My two-bits:

What is special about this story are the rich details provided for both the makings of the Chicago's World Fair 1893 and of a serial killer during that time period.

~*~
* Listened to audiobook version.

* part of Diesel Book Club, Larkspur (here)