OK y’all, I think I am going to call it: I do not like true crime books about murder. Not that I I am squeamish or have the heebie-jeebies about it - I mean, The Silence of the Lambs is one of my favorite books of all time!
For me, these books seem to either drag on with red herrings, too much detail, or the author’s personal story. And in some cases I can see why that is a draw, and why many people enjoyed I’ll be Gone in the Dark. But... I didn’t like that one either.
We Keep the Dead Close was only interesting to me when the author expounded upon the idiosyncrasies of Harvard (women had different diplomas until 1999!) and the rampant misogyny. I could read a book that focused on those type of things, fascinating stuff I can’t understand with a quick Google search. It’s also morally conflicting, consuming someone’s death as entertainment.
So, yeah, the thing about murder investigations is that you can easily Google how things went down, but you can’t tell me a whole story about the inner workings of Harvard, or THERANOS, or a guy faking an orchestra from a quick internet search. (The last two referring to two of the crime-y types of books I actually enjoyed: Bad Blood and Sounds Like Titanic.)