Apparently, I've decided that relaxing with a good book means reading about murder, missing people, suspicious husbands, family secrets, and small towns where absolutely everyone is hiding something.
Very Soothing.
I don't know what it is about true crime and thrillers, but once I get on a kick, I'm all in. Give me a suspicious death, an unreliable narrator, a detective who refuses to let something go, or a family with way too many secrets, and suddenly the laundry can wait.
So if your idea of a cozy evening also involves curling up under a blanket and reading something that makes you double-check that the doors are locked, here's what I've been reading lately.
Broken Plea: The Explosive Search for Truth Behind the Idaho Murders by Christopher Whitcomb
This book questions what really happened in the house on King Road--and the results of that investigation, still unfolding in real time, will astound you. Was there more than one killer? Had the crime scene been cleaned and sanitized before the police arrived? Was furniture staged to throw off detectives? In the aftermath of Bryan Kohberger's request to withdraw his guilty plea, there are more questions than ever before. The "conclusion" to this case has never set right with me. This book made it even more clear that we do know the whole story.
The Barn: The Secret History of a Murder in Mississippi by Wright Thompson
This is the revelatory account of the murder of Emmett Till that lays bare the long lead-up to the crime and how the truth was hidden for so long. Wright Thompson has a deep, local understanding of this story- the world of the families both Emmett Till and his killers, the historical forces that brought them together in the same place, and how the crime came to loom so large. putting the killing floor of the barn on the map of West Half, and the Delta, and America, is a way onto the road this country must travel if we are to heal our oldest deepest wound. This is an incredible history of a crime that changed America.
Where the Crawfish Swim by Andrea Smith
This book is inspired by the 2016 Pike County Massacre. And that is a case that has intrigued me for 10 years now. This novel is fictional. The "Pike County Massacre" happened on April of 2016 in Pike County, Ohio. In the book the county is called Briar County Ohio where people move at their own pace. They hunt, they fish, they farm.-but their secrets run deeper than the fishing holes that dot the countryside. And Dalton Edwards, DEA agent, is about to uncover a few of them after his boss sends him to Briar County on a low-priority assignment as punishment.
So tell me: What's the best true crime or thriller book you've read lately? Because I need to know what I should add to my TBR next!
Much Love,
Beth
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