Review by Booklist Review
Late on a November night in 2022, a killer took the lives of four University of Idaho college students. The crime, carried out methodically and ruthlessly, left local law enforcement grasping for clues and the victims' families and media screaming for answers. Bryan Kohberger was a doctoral student attending Washington State University in nearby Pullman, Washington. A formerly troublesome teen, he became a conscientious student in his twenties and found sobriety. But troubling characteristics began to emerge that led to him alienating friends and family. By that November, Kohberger's postgraduate studies were hanging by a thread. When Kohberger's father arrived to accompany Bryan on a cross-country drive home in the days after the still-unsolved, high-profile murders, he noticed something off about his son. And then police showed up at the Kohberger home. Journalist Blum (The Spy Who Knew Too Much, 2022) knows his way around a compelling true-crime narrative. In this pithy yet significant telling, he provides the essential details of the heavily scrutinized investigation, along with fascinating details about the young adults whose lives were devastatingly cut short.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Journalist Blum (The Spy Who Knew Too Much) expands on his Air Mail coverage of the 2022 murders of four University of Idaho students in this mesmerizing true-crime account. Drawing on court documents and interviews, Blum reconstructs the early morning of November 13, when Madison Mogen, Xana Kernodel, Ethan Chapin, and Kaylee Goncalves were stabbed to death by a masked intruder in their off-campus apartment. Detectives arrested criminology student Bryan Kohberger after discovering security camera footage of his car at the scene, and Blum mounts a rigorous study of Kohberger's troubled teenage years, pulling from lengthy conversations with his father. Blum also digs into the case's many unanswered questions, including Kohberger's motive, and why the victims' neighbor refrained from calling 911 after seeing the assailant leave the apartment. The rigorous reporting is elevated by evocative prose (Goncalves's grieving father "had become another victim, another innocent sucked down into the swirling vortex of the hostile, destructive force that had been set loose in the aftermath of that terrible November night"), though Kohberger's upcoming trial means the narrative is necessarily incomplete. For now, however, Blum's thorough account stands as the definitive chronicle of a shocking crime. Agent: Lynn Nesbit, Janklow & Nesbit Assoc. (June)Correction: A previous version of this review incorrectly stated that the author covered the University of Idaho killings for the New York Times.
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
The prolific nonfiction author returns with the story behind the 2022 slayings of four University of Idaho students. Blum, author of Night of the Assassins, Dark Invasion, and other bestselling books, characterizes Moscow, Idaho, as a "quaint" and "churchy" town that also happened to be home to a university known for being "the best party school in the state." Beneath the pleasant exterior, a disturbing history--which included drug trafficking, brutal murders, and allegations of pedophilia and sexual assault against respected members of a local church--quietly lurked. Blum reveals how the stabbing deaths of Kaylee Goncalves, Maddie Mogen, Xana Kernodle, and Ethan Chapin on November 13, 2022, revealed, in their shocking senselessness, Moscow's unacknowledged dark side. The police investigation ultimately yielded a suspect, a troubled criminology doctorate student named Bryan Kohberger, and circumstantial evidence pointed to Kohberger's guilt. However, there were no significant connections between the indicted killer and any of the victims, which has since led to multiple postponements of the trial: "And so now after all the tedious, exasperating delays, whenever it finally does take place, it will be a footnote to the larger, ineluctable events….Besides, what will the trial reveal? The dialectics of the courtroom would inevitably prevail and opposing teams of experts will be summoned to go at one another." Blum suggests that a second tragedy--the effect the murders have had on victims' families--exists alongside the actual murders themselves. In their frustration with the criminal system and desire for justice, Goncalves' parents and siblings offered support for death penalty legislation that would permit death by a firing squad, effectively making them victims of a "raging, all-consuming anger" that would mark them for life. Blum capably maintains the suspense and thoughtfully probes into the motives of key players in this intriguing yet profoundly unsettling story. A compelling true-crime book. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
