Review by Booklist Review
For all of the podcasts and Netflix docu-series that brought true crime into the modern zeitgeist, this genre solidly thrives where it began: in print journalism. Here, best-selling Bowden (The Last Stone, 2019) collects six of his long-form articles, most from Vanity Fair, each delving the intricacies, patience, and persistence of detective work. Five of the six stories are from the last decade, while "The Incident at Alpha Tau Omega," from 1983, about a gang rape at a fraternity, retains a (sadly) contemporary resonance and feel. PI Ken Brennan, the memorable cold-case-cracking rock star, features in three investigations, and he is reason enough to pick up this slim and satisfying volume. While humanizing the victims--including a man convicted of attempted sex crimes against children, cast as a victim of entrapment in "why don't u tell me wht ur into"--these are, at their core, detective stories. Bowden writes with journalistic efficiency and a matter-of-fact admiration of the investigative work--from the ingenious to the tedious--of his detectives, whose mystery solving "creates order from disorder, salves our ache for moral balance."
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
The six previously published true crime stories in this engrossing collection from Bowden (Black Hawk Down) showcase his gift for narrative nonfiction. "The Incident at Alpha Tau Omega" recounts the gang rape of a Penn college student in 1983, providing insights into how both the victim and the accused were treated in a different era, with the culprits eventually receiving what amounted to a slap on the wrist. Whodunit fans will relish "The Body in Room 348," in which businessman Greg Fleniken was relaxing in a Texas hotel room one evening in 2010 when he was fatally "struck from nowhere" by a mysterious something. The lack of obvious wounds led the police to believe he died of natural causes, until an autopsy revealed severe internal injuries. Fleniken's widow was fortunate to get PI Ken Brennan, who appears in other articles, to crack the case. In the book's most memorable piece, "why don't u tell me wht ur into," Bowden reconstructs an online sting aimed at child predators via interviews with the FBI agent and the man eventually arrested, and raises thought-provoking questions about entrapment. New readers will want to seek out Bowden's book-length nonfiction after devouring this. (July)
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Review by Library Journal Review
Though Bowden (The Last Stone) notes that crime stories serve to titillate, he proves that the genre is more than voyeuristic thrills. The six pieces found here, taken from over the course of the author's career as a crime reporter, are uncomfortably thrilling--as good crime writing should be--but they contain insights into our often sexist and racist society, the criminal justice system, and who gets the privilege of having their stories told and believed. In "The Incident at Alpha Tau Omega," Bowden cites sociological accounts of group mentality as he tells the story of a gang rape that took place in 1983 at a fraternity at the University of Pennsylvania. Examining a Delaware County, PA, case where local police and FBI agents posed as children online to find potential child molesters, Bowden raises difficult questions as to what constitutes entrapment. The other tales are equally compelling, such as a look at a police department that protects one of its own, as well as a seemingly routine death that turns out to be anything but. VERDICT This true crime master expands the limits of the genre, digging to find answers and revealing that even the most horrific crimes are often linked to a larger story about America.--Bart Everts, Rutgers Univ.-Camden Lib., NJ
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
Veteran narrative journalist Bowden resurrects a half-dozen works of true crime, ranging from merely creepy to palpably fascinating. Best known for his visceral accounts of warfare in Mogadishu and the lives and deaths of Pablo Escobar and Osama bin Laden--not to mention his excellent Vietnam book, Hue 1968 (2017)--here the author recalls his foundations as a reporter, a trade that "hones an appetite for crime." The opening story, published in the Philadelphia Inquirer in 1983 as "The Incident at Alpha Tau Omega," is awkward. While Bowden's writing is solid and sincere, his attempt to parse the moral implications of the gang rape of a female college student comes off as both overly disturbing and painfully sympathetic to the perpetrators. Similar themes arise in "why don't u tell me wht ur into," a 2009 Vanity Fair piece in which Bowden uses the case of a sex offender to debate the ethics of entrapment à la the TV show To Catch a Predator. The author's reporting in "…A Million Years Ago" (Vanity Fair, 2012), about the investigation into a decades-old cold case, has attracted some controversy, but there's no skepticism about his portrayal of the investigation itself, resolutely documented and as incisive and enthralling as any true-crime podcast or episode of NCIS. The collection picks up considerably with the introduction of private eye Ken Brennan, a no-nonsense, profane former Long Island cop. "I'm from New York," Brennan tells one suspect. "I talk like that to everybody." Readers are likely to have encountered some version of the title story ("from the start, it was a bad case") in popular media. However, that piece and its companion stories, "The Body in Room 348" and "Who Killed Euhommie Bond?" are as gripping as any murder mystery and feature shades of Agatha Christie and Edgar Allan Poe. An uneven but often enthralling collection of true-crime investigations. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
