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We Keep the Dead Close: A Murder at Harvard and a Half Century of Silence
Maybe someday
49
/100
I Index Overall Rating
Readers
18/100Critics
80/100Scholars
Author:
Becky Cooper
Publisher:
Grand Central Publishing
Date:
November 10, 2020
A former New Yorker staffer delves into the unsolved 1969 murder of Harvard University graduate student Jane Britton, who at the time was the daughter of Radcliffe's vice president. Cooper first heard of Jane's story when she was a Harvard undergraduate, where swirling rumors set her on a decade-long investigation into the murder and Harvard's culture of sexism and elitism.
What The Reviewers Say
We Keep the Dead Close by Becky Cooper is a brilliantly idiosyncratic variant of generic true crime, rather more a memoir than a conventional work of reportage, so structured that the revelation of the murderer is not the conclusion or even the most important feature of the book.
This is not your typical true crime book, and that’s very much a good thing.
... exhaustive and extraordinary.
... an over 400-page true crime book that's overstuffed with suspects, motives, red herrings and interviews — as well as Cooper's first-person meditations about her own fascination with the case.
