Daylight reading only: If You Tell

A few weeks ago I was listening to the My Favorite Murder podcast when they were talking about this woman who started a “clinic” to help people with a myriad of health conditions by starving them. She wound up killing a bunch of her patients – the story was horrific. I can’t remember if it was Karen or Georgia doing the telling but she got a lot of the story by reading a book that Gregg Olsen wrote about it.

Weirdly, a few days later someone from Gregg Olsen’s publishing team reached out to see if I would be interested in reading his new book, out December 1st. I didn’t even finish reading the email before I replied YES.

I thought the story of the starvation cure was awful but it has nothing on the heinous deeds of Shelly Knopek and her husband, Dave. If You Tell: A True Story of Murder, Family Secrets, and the Unbreakable Bond of Sisterhood tells the story of Shelly and Dave Knopek, the Washington State couple who abused, terrorized and murdered three people who had moved in with them, while also inflicting heinous abuse on their three daughters.

I very much appreciated that Olsen began the book by telling readers that the Knopek’s daughters, Nikki, Sami and Tori are today, safe and thriving in their new lives, away from the devastating abuse that was forced upon them for years. As I made my way through their story, I hung onto the fact that the girls, at least, were going to be OK in the end. The things that they saw, the things that were done to them, the way their mother gaslighted them throughout their lives – it is remarkable to me that these women are anywhere near OK today.

This story is one of the worst that I’ve ever read and Olsen does an incredible job of not reveling in the gruesome details. He manages to describe what happened without an ounce of rubbernecking which I for one was grateful for. I got the sense the entire time that he was a friend of the family, someone who had worked to gain the trust of these women who had burdened with horrific family secrets for so long. I’m not trying to be coy by not describing the details – for one thing, I think the reading experience is a bit better by not knowing too much, for another, it truly is a disgusting tale and if true crime isn’t your thing, you don’t need to know the details!

I couldn’t put this book down. I raced through the pages in less than two days, reluctant to leave the family at any point where things were especially bad. Olsen’s writing is spare, to the point, sticking to the facts and refraining from embellishing a story that’s already worse than anything you’ve read recently. It’s the kind of book that I wouldn’t read before bed, for fear that the Knopeks would haunt my dreams. I recommend full daylight when someone else is home for your own reading experience.

If you’re a true crime reader, if you’re a murderino, if you love 48 Hours and Dateline, I know you’re going to want to pick up If You Tell when it’s out next week.

Thanks to Dandelion PR for an ARC of this book. 

#15BooksofSummer – Update

Bet you all thought I had given up on the #15BooksofSummer Challenge Cathy @ 746 Books has been hosting.

(The idea is that you make a list of 10, 15, or 20 books from your TBR, you read them between June 3 and September 3, and then you post about them. A bit of focus for the summer months and a nice way to clear off some of those books that always seem to get overlooked)

But I haven’t! I’ve been trying really hard to make sure that the books get read. Posting about them however…given the choice between using nap-time (sacred, sacred time) for reading or for writing content…this lazy mom chooses reading.

I’ve been on a bit of a non-fiction tear and gravitated towards the non-fiction picks on my list. Looking at the books I wanted to mention, they are all non-fiction so I guess I do have a theme today. I also really liked all of them.

First up: Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt. Am I the only one that I didn’t realize that this was non-fiction? In May of 1981, antiques dealer Jim Williams shot and killed Danny Hansford, a local male prostitute. Over the next decade, there are four different trials and everyone in Savannah has an opinion on what happened.

I love true crime but this is probably one of the least interesting crimes I’ve read about. What makes this book such a compelling read is the cast of characters that the author socializes with during his time in Savannah. He has a front row seat to all the drama and introduces readers to the most incredible people: The Lady Chablis, a local transgender woman and entertainer, the folk magic practitioner Minerva, fighting with her husband, Dr. Buzzard, from beyond the grave, the guy who walks around with a small bottle of poison that could supposedly kill the entire city if he dropped it in the water supply, Williams’ lawyer, the keeper of the University of Georgia’s bulldog mascot, Uga.

Along with the people, Berendt manages to create an incredible sense of place. 1980s Savannah comes to life. It is, however, very much a product of it’s time. Berendt tells a privileged story from a position of privilege and it shows, despite the fact that at least half of the people involved in the story were actually quite poor.

After I finished the book, I watched the movie directed by Clint Eastwood. That’s probably where I got the idea that this book was fiction. The whole time my husband and I were watching it, I very helpfully explained to him what the actual story was.

I’d put off reading Les Parisiennes by Anne Sebba because I rightly assumed that it would be a tough read. Les Parisiennes tells stories of the women in Paris during WWII, those who collaborated, the ones who were a part of the Resistance, those who were deported to concentration camps for being Jewish.

It is a really wide picture of what it was like to be a woman in Paris during the War, how the ‘choices’ one made were hardly choices. What choice is there between your child or your husband, feeding your family or spitting at a Nazi, living or dying? Sebba does a really good job at reminding readers that the things these women did weren’t so much choices, as they were the things that had to be done.

After the war, France (and a number of other countries including the Netherlands) liked to position their citizenry as all having been a part of the Resistance but that wasn’t actually true at all. There was also a marked difference between how those women returning from a place like Ravensbruck for Resistance work and those who returned from Auschwitz for being Jewish, were treated. And a few years after the war, people started to express that they were tired of hearing about it, how it was time to move on. For so many of these women, moving on wasn’t really possible.

Reading Les Parisiennes reminded me a bit of Caroline Moorehead’s A Train in Winter. But it was more difficult to keep track of everyone’s story in Les Parisiennes. Still, I found it to be a thoroughly researched picture of an unspeakable time.

Finally we come to the book that affected me the most: 21 Things You May Not Know About the Indian Act by Bob Josephs. Reading about Indigenous Peoples in Canada has always been something I’ve shied away from, likely because I knew it would shatter the ideal we hold that racism isn’t an issue here. But in the last couple of years I’ve tried to educate myself.

This book is based on a viral blog post that Josephs wrote. Josephs is actually a culture sensitivity trainer, working with companies to better understand Indigenous culture and history. The book covers things that you probably knew (it created reserves, forbade students from speaking their Indigenous languages, denied women status) and a LOT that you probably didn’t.

I obviously knew that the Indian Act was a travesty, stripping peoples of their culture, language and identity as resource-rich land was taken over by the Canadian government. But I didn’t know how far-reaching it actually was. I didn’t know that the Act created the band system, overriding traditional means of government that had worked for generations; that they were forbidden from appearing in traditional dress and performing dances or even just appearing at exhibitions or events; that it declared the potlatch illegal; that it renamed people with European names; or that it made it so that Indigenous peoples were unable to sell the produce from the farms they were forced to work.

I didn’t know that the Indian Act still exists.

And even allowing for the times in which he lived, John A. MacDonald (Canada’s first Prime Minister) was incredibly racist and I seriously don’t know why he’s still on our currency (he got bumped off the $10 but he’s being moved to the $100 – so long, Borden).

In 2015, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, released it’s report and made 94 recommendations in order for Canadians to address the cultural genocide perpetrated by the Canadian government. Bob Josephs has included all of them in this book and I found it incredibly helpful, not only to have that as a resource, but also to have a way forward. It is 100% my responsibility to help work towards Reconciliation and now I have some concrete ideas for how I can do that.

Seriously, this book blew my mind. I’m still thinking about it weeks later and I want to press a copy into the hands of everyone I know.

So that’s it for the update for now – I’m about to finish A Gentleman in Moscow and then I will have read…7 of 15. Which is better than I thought and also really validates my decision not to pick 20!

I’ll Be Gone in the Dark

If you are a true crime fan, if you listen to the podcasts, you were waiting for the posthumous release of Michelle McNamara’s I’ll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman’s Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer.

Michelle McNamara was the brains behind the True Crime Diary blog. When she started looking into the unsolved case of the East Area Rapist – Original Night Stalker, she became obsessed. I’ll Be Gone in the Dark is the story of both her obsession and the search for the identity of the man who terrorized California with over 60 rapes and at least 10 murders in the 1970s and 1980s.

This book is amazing and horrifying and great and the worst. I could not read it before bed, in the dark, or if I was alone in the house. Three friends read it at the same time as me and one night one texted me about it right before I went to bed. I couldn’t fall asleep for ages thinking about this book. McNamara lived alongside her investigation and as you read the book, you are living that with her. She once scoured yearbooks looking for waterpolo players because one time a victim said that the guy had muscular thighs. She tracked down a pair of cufflinks with the letter N off eBay because she thought they were ones that he stole from a victim. She spoke with those involved in the case, then and now, and with other online amateur sleuths as obsessed as she was.

McNamara’s brilliance is on display on every single page she wrote. This book was put together after her death by her husband, Patton Oswalt, and some of her research partners. Because of this, sometimes the book feels a little disorganized and disjointed. But don’t let that put you off because this is a classic in the true crime genre. I’ll Be Gone in the Dark will live alongside The Stranger Beside Me and In Cold Blood for always, it’s that good.

It’s hard to think about the fact that she didn’t get to see her book out into the world, that her search for the identity of the man she dubbed the Golden State Killer was cut short. I have no doubt that she would have figured it out, if she hasn’t already. I think the hope of anyone who reads this book is that this will spark interest from others who will figure it out.

If you love true crime, this book needs to be on your list. Just, seriously, don’t read it in the dark. Or alone.

Lady Killers

I’ve always been fascinated by true crime. I used to marathon City Confidential and American Justice and watch Dateline specials secretly before it was a Thing.

But lately, it seems like it’s true crime all the time. I listen to crime podcasts when I drive (My Favorite Murder, Casefile, Sword and Scale, Someone Knows Something, Missing and Murdered: Who Killed Alberta Williams etc), google the stories when I’m done, watch the documentaries on Netflix and…read the books.

So when a copy of Tori Telfer’s Lady Killers: Deadly Women Throughout History showed up at my door I was thrilled. 

Back when I was stuck in bed with vertigo, Lady Killers kept me company all day.

I’m not sure that Telfer is as big of a crime aficionado as some of her readers will be. But she makes an interesting point: throughout history, women have been accused of some heinous crimes but they are always written off because they are women. We all know Ted Bundy and David Berkowitz and John Wayne Gacy but how many of us are familiar with Anna Marie Hahn, Kate Bender or Lizzie Halliday? History has a tendency to downplay the achievements of women, and while I would hesitate to call their crimes “achievements”, these women were forgotten as soon as possible.

Telfer has gone back through the history books and resurrected the tales of these lady killers. Like Kate Belford, who along with her brother and parents ran a small inn in Kansas, one where weary travellers would stop for a night. Except that Kate would cut their throats after flirting with them and their bodies would disappear through a trapdoor in the floor. Before robbing them, they’d bury the bodies in a field behind the house. Or Raya and Sakina, Egyptian sisters who ran a brothel that was hugely profitable while the French here in control but who resorted to desperate acts once that was no longer the case; in 1920 the remains of 17 dead girls were found beneath the floors of their home. So evil were these women that to this day, little girls are never called Raya or Sakina in Egypt. And Marie-Madeleine d’Aubrey, a wealthy French aristocrat, poisoned her entire family one by one to get the inheritance all for herself. But after poisoning her family, she had to keep going to prevent others from finding out.

I appreciated that Telfer didn’t focus on North American crime, that she branched out and found stories from France, Russia, Egypt and Hungary. And OK, obviously these women all did heinous things, but I thought that Telfor also did a great job of illustrating what it was like to be a woman in the times they lived. These stories are from the 1500s, 1950s, 1870s, 1300s, 1920s and 1670s. The realities of women living then are very different from the way women live now (in first world countries anyway). Some were motivated by extreme circumstances, others by greed or blood lust. Telfor in no way makes excuses for their actions – I think she falls more into the “killers are killers and they are all heinous” category of true crime reader – but she goes to great lengths to tell their complete stories and it shows.

And lest you think this book is heavy or terrifying:

“The choice to keep these lady killers fairly ‘vintage’ […] was largely an aesthetic one; with victims and perpetrators long dead, the stories hopefully err on the side of spooky and mesmerizing, rather than simply…depressing. Today’s serial killers are certainly worthy of study but there’s a heaviness and a sadness to modern crimes that history tends to erase, for better or for worse.”

In keeping with this aesthetic, each chapter is accompanied by hella charming portraits of the women featured by the talented Dame Darcy.

Oh yes, this book was just what I needed.

I received an ARC of this book. Any errors in quoting are due to coming from an uncorrected copy.