by Becky Cooper
Overall: I picked up this book because I attended Harvard and was curious about this cold case. In 1969, Jane Britton, a graduate student in anthropology, was found murdered in her apartment in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Becky Cooper first heard the story as a kind of legend when she was an undergrad; her eventual investigation into the case would last a decade and take her across the country, deep into the past, and down the rabbit holes of the internet. Will Jane’s case be solved by an amateur? Or added to the list of cold cases closed through advances in science? Or will it just linger, too old and forgotten by too many?
Likes: The research and reporting are stellar; you get a good sense of how difficult it is to track down witnesses, friends of victims, and potential suspects in a cold case and convince them to talk on the record. The book also does a good job of unpacking the frankly icky directions speculation about cold cases can take on the internet. Without giving too much away, it’s fair to say that several people identified by amateur sleuths as suspects are completely innocent of the murder of Jane Britton, and yet some of them have endured decades of suspicion. We Keep the Dead Close succeeds at giving Jane a voice – lost for decades – that restores some of her personality (prickly, quirky, independent, funny, smart, damaged) and gives her back some of what was stolen not only by her murderer but also by pervasive misogyny in the press coverage and police investigations.
Dislikes: Like many books in the true crime genre, the book takes some long detours investigating “suspects” who are only glancingly connected to the original crime. At times the narrative got bogged down in the minutiae of these stories, which go far afield from the original crime. The book also struggles with the challenges facing all cold case reporters, including lack of access to the full police investigation and the passage of time. The ending felt a bit abrupt, with far less attention devoted to the actual perpetrator than the stories of some of the suspects.
FYI: murder, violence, misogyny.
Liz Helfrich 