I'm currently listening to the epilogue of this on audio, of which I didn't start the first 172 pages with. I can't help but feel disappointed with this, even though I think it's an important addition to the true crime genre. Although I think Jolly did a good job expressing what happened to Tina Fontaine, the issue of missing and murdered Indigenous women (mamiw) in Canada, and I do still think that it's important colonizers read books like this, I hated how much it focused on the lead detective assigned to her case. It really painted O'Donavan as a white saviour; the only person who spoke about how tragic Tina's death was, and how his efforts to find her killer went so unnoticed. It was kind of infuriating! Honestly, did O'Donavan learn nothing working on the case? Did he not realize that yeah, sure, he cared, but this isn't about him, it's about the explicit racism of police officers to Indigenous peoples, primarily women, in Canada? It's about the trauma they've faced and the zero effort Canada has done to rectify that, and how that zero effort filters down into the justice system and law-enforcement, and the explicit bias they use towards Indigenous peoples, finding any excuse to arrest them or ignore them. And, ultimately, this filters down to every day citizens.
Even though I think Jolly made an effort, I think it was shadowed by the bias towards O'Donavan and his dominant narrative throughout the book.
After chatting with a friend, too, she let me know a lot of true crime is like this, as this is really the first true crime book I've read. I definitely want to branch out and keep reading true crime, but I'm disappointed that this is really what the genre looks like.