Episode 12: On Writing True Crime

In this episode of the Watchung Booksellers Podcast, authors Katherine Dykstra and Joe Pompeo unpack the nuances of writing in the historical true crime genre.

Joe Pompeo is the author of Blood & Ink: The Scandalous Jazz Age Double Murder That Hooked America on True Crime. A veteran magazine journalist and author, most recently as senior correspondent for Vanity Fair, he's written for The New York Times, The New Yorker, New York, Bloomberg, Businessweek, and many other publications. Subscribe to his newsletter at joepompeo.substack.com.

Katherine Dykstra is the author of What Happened to Paula: An Unsolved Death and the Danger of American Girlhood, which was on Best Books of Summer lists in the New York Times Book Review, People Magazine, and the Chicago Tribune, among others. She has served as a senior nonfiction editor at Guernica and was recently a writer-in-residence at Monmouth University. Her essays have been published in The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, Columbia, and Poets & Writers.

Resources:
Episode 12 Books
My Favorite Murder podcast
Serial podcast
Black and Missing HBO Series
Suspect Arrested after Publication of I’ll Be Gone in the Dark
Stolen podcast
Under the Bridge Hulu Series
Murdaugh Murder in South Carolina
New Jersey Case: John and Joyce Sheridan
Lindbergh Kidnapping
The Suspicions of Mr Whicher Series

Books:
A full list of the books and authors mentioned in this episode is available here.

Register for Upcoming Events.

The Watchung Booksellers Podcast is produced by Kathryn Counsell and Marni Jessup and is recorded at Silver Stream Studio in Montclair, NJ.

The show is edited by Kathryn Counsell and Bree Testa. Special thanks to Timmy Kellenyi and Derek Mattheiss.

Original music is composed and performed by Violet Mujica.

Art & design and social media by Evelyn Moulton. Research and show notes by Caroline Shurtleff.

Thanks to all the staff at Watchung Booksellers and The Kids’ Room!

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Transcript

Marni: Hello everybody and welcome back to the Watchung Booksellers Podcast. I'm Marni and I'm here with Kathryn. Hi Marni. 

Kathryn: How you doing? Reading anything new? 

Marni: I am. I'm reading an older book that came out in 2008 by Sarah Lyall. It's called The Anglo Files: A Field Guide to the British. It's really fun and I'm really enjoying it.

Marni: How about you? It's good. I

Kathryn: just started The Guest Lecture by Martin Riker. I follow Maria Semple on Instagram. I don't know if you know her. She wrote Where'd You Go, Bernadette? And she's done a couple events with us in the bookstore and she has the best recommendations on Instagram. So follow her if you are so inclined, but she recommended this book, The Guest Lecture, and It's a little tricky to explain but it's basically about this woman with insomnia who is preparing for a lecture on economics and she is having a talk with John Maynard Keynes the night before the lecture and it's just really pretty brilliant so I dig it.

Kathryn: But I'll tell you, this morning I opened up an article on In NJ. com about an unsolved murder of an old woman in 1989 and you can bet I blew off everything I was supposed to do because true crime just sucked me right in and that leads us to this week's topic. Hello true crime. 

Marni: Yeah, today we're digging into this dark, shocking, sometimes horrific genre and why it interests so many.

Marni: So we're bringing in two journalists. who have written true crime stories and have a lot to share about the subject. Joe Pompeo and Kathryn Dykstra. 

Kathryn: Joe Pompeo is the author of Blood and Ink, the scandalous jazz age double murder that hooked America on true crime, published by HarperCollins in 2022. He's also a veteran magazine journalist and author.

Kathryn: Most recently as senior correspondent for Vanity Fair, and he's written for The New York Times, The New Yorker, New York, Bloomberg, Businessweek, and many other publications. And you can subscribe to his newsletter at joepompeo. substack. com. 

Marni: Kathryn Dykstra is the author of What Happened to Paula? An Unsolved Death and the Danger of American Girlhood, which was on Best Books of Summer lists in the New York Times Book Review, People Magazine, and the Chicago Tribune, among others.

Marni: She served as a senior non fiction editor at Guernica for many years and was recently a writer in residence at Monmouth University. Her essays have published in the New York Times Book Review, the Washington Post, Columbia. Guernica, poets and writers. She's at work on a novel that takes place in a maternity home in the 1960s.

Kathryn: Enjoy the conversation, and we'll be back afterward to fill you in on what's coming up in the store.

Joe: Hi, Kathryn. 

Katherine: Hi, Joe. How are you? 

Joe: I'm good. I'm good. It's good to see you here today though. We see each other fairly often 'cause in, in full disclosure, our kids are friends and we're at all the same school activities and, 

Katherine: and the pool, the pool 

Joe: circuit and all of that. And what a small world that we both have books in the same genre.

Katherine: I know we actually met through our kids and then only found out afterward that you were releasing a book that was in the same genre as I had just released. 

Joe: That's right. Would you wanna tell me. about your book first, which I've read, but our listeners would love to hear about it, I'm sure. 

Katherine: Sure, sure. What Happened to Paula is the story of an 18 year old girl who lived in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and in 1970, she disappeared.

Katherine: And I sort of came to the story because my mother in law, Susan Chihok, who is a writer, was making a documentary film about the case when I met my mother in law. And she convinced me to work on it in the end, and we can talk about that in a minute. And at first I was like, absolutely not, because it was terrifying, and I was not ready to think about what happened to this young girl.

Katherine: But then, sort of, flash forward a number of years, and the documentary had sort of taken off. And she was convinced that rather than film, the story would be best as a book. And as a journalist, she came back to me. And at this point in my life, I was a new mother and sort of facing my own womanhood in a way that I hadn't before.

Katherine: And rather than fear, which is what I felt. In the first place, I now felt anger and rage and at that point I was ready to look at the story. So you, you also were sort of an accidental true crime journalist. Yeah, you know, I never, 

Joe: you know, I, I'm not so much like a true crime Person, you know, I'm, I'm, you know, I guess like I've, I like Serial as much as the next guy or whatever, all the, you know, those big productions from, of the modern true crime genre on Netflix or whatever.

Joe: But, you know, I'm more drawn to like dark narrative history type of stories. Mm-Hmm. , I've always been fascinated by like Jack de Ripper and Victorian era sort of things. And, and, and even in the literature, I love the Willie Collins mysteries and. Dracula and all that sort of stuff, but you know, I at some point maybe in the past 10 years started reading more like narrative history Historical true crime sort of nonfiction, you know so with a kind of like devil in the white city sort of stuff and then in 2018 when I decided I wanted to do a book for various reasons I was talking with my Agent, you know, and I covered the media industry professionally.

Joe: And originally I was thinking, you know, what's, what's something I write about for Humanity Fair in my professional life. Maybe that could be a book. But then I was just like, you know, I'd actually love to do a book like these books. I love reading, you know, some old, historic, Murder, yarn, sort of thing.

Joe: That's literally, I just decided I wanted to do a book like that. Right. So, it's not so much true crime as a, as a genre, so much as, you know, these old stories where you can get lost in another world. And also, they're a little less emotionally and psychologically fraught to confront because they happened a long time ago, you know, versus kind of like fresh trauma.

Joe: But in any case, so my, I decided that the story I landed on became the book Blood and Ink, uh, which is a wild jazz age murder mystery involving some wealthy people doing bad things and also the simultaneous birth of the tabloid press in Manhattan and the way that they, you know, really inserted themselves into this really bizarre double homicide that had taken place.

Joe: So that's how I, I ended up in this world. 

Katherine: Right. Yeah, that's so interesting cause, you know, in the same vein, sort of, you know, my book is True crime, but really I think of it as like a social history or even a memoir. There's, you know, there's so many memoir parts, but you know, really the, you know, the reason that I wrote the book, I mean, was to give the case light, but also to sort of interrogate the systems of the time, right?

Katherine: It's less. a whodunit as like what done it, right? How, how this happened? How could this girl be allowed to like leave her house and be killed? And you know, it wasn't just one culprit. It was, it was everything. So I also, you know, don't feel tied to the genre though my publisher was like, this is what, this is what this is and this is what we're gonna call it.

Joe: But your book, you were, there was a point you can feel that you're like trying, that you really do get Really immersed in her story and you're trying to find out who did kill her, right? 

Katherine: That's true. I mean, I became weirdly obsessed with it in that, like, I can still think about the case. You know, I've been working on this since 2014, so I can still think about the case and And find myself down some sort of rabbit hole.

Katherine: I mean, I want to know what happened to her just as anyone else does. Even as I know that really the most, I think the most important thing that her case illuminates is like all the ways that women are at risk in the world. Right. I didn't say this earlier, but you know, she had two boyfriends and this whole This was 1970, when, you know, that made you a slut, and one of those boyfriends was a black Lots of victim 

Joe: blaming, sort of, culture.

Joe: Oh, exactly. 

Katherine: Exactly. 

Joe: So your story was about 50 years ago at this point. I was researching a 100 year old story. This is, you know, these are not Super fresh, there's a lot of archival sort of material to go through. What did you find were some of the more difficult challenges of trying to like re investigate or re report a story from decades ago when people's memories aren't fresh or, you know, there's people have died since and all sorts of obstacles stand in your way as a writer?

Katherine: That actually was the biggest one was the fact that literally the people who knew the story were dying as I was reporting the story. You know, when I came on board in 2001, At that point, Paula's mother had already died. Many of the police who'd investigated the crime had already died. Luckily, my mother in law had done interviews with a number of them, so that still existed.

Katherine: But when I sort of turned back around to find a lot of these sources, they were either gone or Their memories were going. There was also this like weird pressure to get to them before either something happened or before they like forgot all the things that happened during that time. In fact, in the time that I reported and in the years after the book, four of the people that I interviewed have died.

Katherine: Um, so that was definitely a pressure. And then the other pressure was when my mother in law first started investigating this case. As I said, she was able to speak with Paula's mother and Paula's sister. I think that in the years since Susan interviewed them and when I came on board they sort of rethought their wanting to be involved.

Katherine: I think that they saw that in many ways they didn't come off that great. You know, here's the thing, like I tried to paint them as of their time, which was a time of racism and segregation, but Paula was progressive and you know she, she was. excited to have a black boyfriend and her mother was absolutely not.

Katherine: And I think that, you know, in retrospect, looking back, they saw that, uh, we don't maybe look so great. So that was another, a huge challenge. Yeah, 

Joe: no, it's funny because part of me, and obviously the murder I was writing about and researching was a hundred years old. Everyone's dead. There's no direct descendants of the principal characters, at least.

Joe: So, you know, as a reporter, you pick up the phone, you confirm the facts with the person that's happened recently. It's all very easy. Things so old people's memories fail or there's no one to call so you know part of me Wanted to have access to people like you did but then also like, you know, I didn't have to deal with How are the families gonna feel about the way i'm portraying them?

Joe: Will they talk to me will they? You know, there's all these sort of conundrums that arise when you're writing someone else's story, essentially, and the trust they have to place in you. So I kind of actually felt, although it was a big challenge, really only being able to rely on, albeit a vast trove of archival material that I was able to unearth.

Joe: Like, there's still things you can never feel, you know, fully, that you're getting a hundred percent. percent because because you don't know and a transcript is only as good as as the words on the paper the newspaper reports You know, we don't know how accurate they are But I also felt like you know, at least I'm not entering any sort of uncomfortable or hostile Conversations with angry family members or things like that.

Joe: Yeah, and you're one of the and there was a sister who didn't Talk. You tried really hard. Oh yeah. I tried really 

Katherine: hard to talk to her and she never, I mean, we've spoke, we've spoken a number of times, but never like in an interview capacity. Yeah, not 

on the record. 

Katherine: Yeah. She was very wary. I mean, here's the thing is like that, that was a humongous challenge for me and it was something that for a while, almost stopped me from writing the book.

Katherine: I was like, well, you know, I don't wanna come into these people's lives and dredge up this like really, really painful. you know, story and make them uncomfortable and upset. But at the same time, I started to think about like, who was I beholden to, right? Like, I don't The reader, 

right? 

Katherine: Well, the reader, I don't know.

Katherine: I sort of felt the whole time that I was beholden to Paula. To the victim, to Paula. Yeah, I just felt like, you know, this girl faced so much risk and this transcended even her life, right? Even afterwards. The police judged her, you know, so they barely looked into this case. The media, there were like three stories ever published about her, like nobody cared.

Katherine: So, I just got to the point where I realized that I cared. And because I cared, she was the one that I was trying to be faithful to, right? Her story was the one I was trying to be faithful to. And then ultimately, as you said, the reader too, right? I think, you know, You know, there's, for me, there's an importance to telling these stories, right?

Katherine: Because it was great for the police to look away. It was great for Cedar Rapids to look away. It was great for the sister to look away, right? Like, none of these people behaved very well. So they don't want to, let's not look at this story, right? Because then it only shows, you know, You know, that maybe we didn't do things right.

Joe: I think, you know, it sounds like you're both, I think, drawn to the stories we wrote our books about. Or, you know, maybe older true crime stories in general, because it also is a way to explore a moment in time and explore history. And in my case, probably maybe more so than yours, to really immerse. There's kind of an escapist element, you know, immersing readers in this, in this world from long ago.

Joe: And, you know, really capturing the period and all that. On a more fundamental level, why do you think that people are drawn to True crime or just you know in general stories about people being killed, being murdered, killers I mean, what do you think it is in terms of the genre that really draws people to it?

Katherine: Yeah, you know I've given this a lot of thought and you know a lot has been written about and talked about the fact that You know, the women are really the drivers of, you know, there are so many women who listen to, you know, My Favorite Murder and all. And with 

Joe: books in general too, I mean. Yeah. But, uh, but especially true crime.

Katherine: 100%. And I think I've come to the understanding that true crime works in the same way as like a horror film does, right? So, like, people watch horror movies in order to sort of, you know, Be afraid in a safe environment, right? So it's like they're coming up against their fear, but knowing that like they're not in any physical danger.

Katherine: And I think that a lot of women have real fears about being in the world, right? Because, you know, it's, it's usually women that are the victims. of violent crime. So I think that true crime allows them to sort of like come up against their fear to face this like, maybe deep down terror while simultaneously being in a safe environment.

Right. I 

Katherine: think it's actually really healthy. Although I don't know what, you know, maybe a psychologist would say about it. What do you think? 

Joe: Yeah, I think that's all really smart and sounds true. And I think there's also probably just an element of, I mean, people love a mystery with twists and turns. And they love a hero story.

Joe: They love rooting for the good guy and trying to find the bad. I mean, those are kind of just like, in terms of just storytelling in general, those are age old elements that I think are important. Readers are always drawn to but I also think there is kind of like a psychological element of these are stories about Most people don't murder taking someone's life or even committing, you know, an epic grift or a con You know, this is a broader genre than just like murder and killing right?

Absolutely 

Joe: And I think that there's a fascination with not understanding How someone can be compelled to commit these acts and getting inside and their head and you know Kind of like this yearning to understand what you what you cannot Comprehend or, or grasp. And I also think, you know, my book and, and your book as well.

Joe: These are both unsolved. And it's funny because when I was selling the book there were some, you know, some of the publishers we were talking to like the publicity department rejected because it's unsolved people want a resolution then other people were like, oh, this is great that it's unsolved, you know, and I kind of in the end I feel like I'm drawn to stories where there's an enduring mystery.

Joe: Um, it's what keeps you going. It's what probably keeps you going with Paula. Right. It's why we're still talking about Jack the Ripper all, all these years later, or Amelia, or any of the, any of these stories, you know, that we just can't know, right? And you probably will never know, but I feel like that's, there's something really alluring about that.

Katherine: Yeah, I feel like it's all like part of our lizard brain, right? That like needs to solve puzzles and needs to put together pieces and have answers. And I think that that's really what true crime often is. is this like putting everything into place and then make it whole right? So I think it's interesting that you brought up the fact that both of our cases aren't solved and that that was initially an issue for your publisher potentially.

Katherine: You know I want to talk about evolution of true crime and how the genre is sort of changing because I am of the opinion that even like 10, 15 years ago, a crime that wasn't solved wasn't really going to be turned into a book, right? Like that was the thing that Susan, my mother in law, faced over and over again with the documentary film is people are like, Oh, this isn't solved.

Katherine: Well, then I'm not interested. Right. How do you see the genre changing? 

Joe: Well, you know, I think that also we're talking about a genre that That is so much bigger than books, right, and there's things that you can do with a book and kind of you can write your way through a non resolution of an ending that is maybe harder to do in other forms, I mean, but also, you know, there's lots of podcasts that end off with no resolution.

Joe: It's probably hardest in Uh, when these things are adapted into, you know, actual films or, or movies or, or whatever, which, you know, also the true crime economy is kind of driving a lot of, you know, the kind of Hollywood boom of the past few years, which is cooling off. But I, I kind of actually see it changing in different ways and, and more in the sense of there is this kind of modern resurgence.

Joe: I mean, there's some people who argue, but there isn't, there is no true crime when we've, there's always been an interest in true crime. But without a doubt, you know, almost 10 years ago, you know, Serial came out and that really did kind of add a lot of heat and fire to this, this genre and, you know, juiced this interest in documentaries and books and everything.

Joe: But it also raised questions about, you know, how these stories are told and how victims are represented, how women are represented. And I think there's more of an acknowledgement that these stories, at least I'd like to think so, I think more people are paying attention to how, you know, The victims are centered as opposed to the killers, or even like the often male investigators.

Joe: Um, I just feel like that's something, you know, in following the genre and people who pay attention to it, I feel like that's a conversation that, you know, as this has become a very commercial and profitable genre, you know, we're all, you and I too, we're making money off of this, you know, we can't ignore that.

Joe: And maybe, you know, we're not rich or anything, but, you know. We got paid to do our books. Um, and I think that there's an awareness that I'd like to think there's, there's a, you know, people are more sensitive to the victims and their portrayal and not, you know, just thinking of extremely lurid stories about madmen and killers and, you know, and kind of paying more attention to, again, the victim.

Joe: Often women, what do you think? Do you find that as well? 

Katherine: No, I agree completely. Like I think that as true crime writers, you have a responsibility, right? And you sort of have to decide, you have to keep it the center of your project, who your responsibility is too. But I also think that like. True crime has gotten such a bad rap about being bored and, and it is, and it can be, but I also think that it's really important.

Katherine: Um, there was a interesting documentary that I watched on HBO called Black and Missing, which was about these two women. I can't remember where they lived, um, but they essentially, were publicizing the number of young black girls that had gone missing all across the United States, I think is what they're doing at this point.

Katherine: But they dedicated an entire episode to the importance of literally holding, uh, law enforcement's feet to the fire, right? Like, in their estimation, it's so easy for law enforcement to look away, right? You know, that's sort of what I was saying earlier, right? Like, oh, nobody's, you know, nobody knows this person is missing except for the family and You know, well, we're not going to really do anything about it because we also have all this other, you know, these, all these other things we're supposed to do.

Katherine: But as soon as, you know, the media gets, gets involved, this documentary was focused on the fact that as, as soon as they were doing these episodes on these girls and, and sort of like letting the community know, Hey, did you know that this like 14 year old girl is still missing and like nothing has been done about it?

Katherine: Then suddenly the police were like actually going to look and do something. So I do think that good things can come out of. And I'll just add one more, which is, um, The Michelle McNamara book. Oh, 

Joe: right. Yeah. Something in the dark, something in the dark. I should, I should know this. 

Katherine: Yeah, but anyways, that was the Golden State Killer.

Katherine: So her book was so interesting because it had been, I don't know, dozens of years that this, you know, Golden State Killer had remained at large, had, you know, murdered dozens of girls. And, you know, as soon as this book came out, ooh, suddenly the police are very concerned and they, they found this guy. Yeah.

Katherine: Like he's. He's been tried. So that's, I think, a really incredible benefit. Now, did I see that with Paula? No. 

Joe: No. Just to back up for a second, the HBO documentary, it's also, you said this is about young black girls who are missing. This is, you know, we should acknowledge this is a pretty overwhelmingly white film.

Joe: genre in terms of the stories that are told, right? The type of stories that get coverage. And I wonder, you know, if we're talking about, you know, how the genre is evolving, maybe that's a sign too of like people or producers of true crime, creators of true crime being more attuned to, you know, different communities, uh, you know, and people of color and, you know, kind of not just focusing on dead middle class white women or even something, you know, like the, you know, the Elon Green book from a couple years ago about this serial murder of gay men in the early 90s, New York, you know, in the midst of the AIDS crisis.

Joe: And, you know, just kind of, you think of true crime, you do think of the missing blonde white girl in a lot of ways, you know, I guess serial also, you know, I think that was a story that had a range of, you know, ethnicities and, and people represented and, 

Katherine: but, but, 

Joe: but overwhelmingly, you know, it's a, it's a, it's a pretty white sort of genre.

Joe: And, you know, I think it would be nice to see a broader range of stories told as it. 

Katherine: I agree 100%, although I am hopeful because I think there were two separate books that came out, uh, within the last few years about missing Indigenous women. There was a podcast about Indigenous communities in, uh, Canada and the ways that there were abuses in, in these, like, schools that they were put into.

Katherine: And then I actually just watched Under the Bridge. Are you aware of that? It's like a, I think it was on Hulu and with Riley Coe and that's the story of a girl who was murdered by her like so called friends and she's Indian and, Indian from India, and that was based on a book that is, it's a true story, right?

Katherine: So I do think that these stories are true. We're realizing that the prevalence of violence in other communities. And I think, you know, 

Joe: Killers of the Flower Moons is a really important book. Oh, good one, yeah. In the sense to, you know, and again, just to your point about the longevity of these stories, and, you know, not just leaving these stories to Mulder.

Joe: That was a book that, the book itself, which came out almost 10 years, I don't know the date off the top of my head, but a while ago and it, you know, became a bestseller. And it, the story about, you know, these, this Native American community in Oklahoma, who had this great injustice done to it. Most people had never heard of it before.

Joe: Right. And that, so the stories being told and now it became such a big film in this past year, you know, like a, Suddenly you have Leonardo DiCaprio and Scorsese making this incredible film. So, so many more people now know about this story that, you know, may have just been lost to history for the most part.

Joe: So, I think those are two important points. I think both, you know, looking outside of like the typical sort of victim or criminal set and also not just leaving stories behind. 

Katherine: No, I agree 100%. You know, I was thinking about our books are so, you know, in conversation in a way because yours. This is a book about a crime that literally fueled newspaper sales, right?

Katherine: Can you explain that a little bit, how the relationship between the crime and what was going on? Yeah, so 

Joe: my book's about the Hall Mills murder case. This was the murder of a reverend from a wealthy family in central New Jersey who was killed with his mistress, who was a working class woman from the choir, and the bodies were found in this.

Joe: You know, very elaborate sort of tableau that had any, any element of sensation. This story had it, you know, sex, murder money, people with money behaving badly. So that, so it's a natural tabloid Mm-Hmm. sort of story. And in the 1920s, this was the birth of the tabloid press in, in America, the Daily, New York Daily News was founded in 1919.

Joe: A couple years later, we had a, a hearse tabloid called the Dear De Mirror, a third tabloid called the New York Indian Graphic. So this was also the, literally the birth of the actual tabloid. format as we know it today. You know, everyone these kind of newspapers that are folded like books and filled with pictures and screaming headlines.

Joe: So this was a crime that this new type of media was just completely drawn to and as these three tabloids were, you know, kind of battling for dominance in the newspaper market and battling each other for circulation, they all really gravitated to this murder case and even after it had kind of gone quiet, Cold in 1922.

Joe: Each of these three tabloids tried, you know, we're trying to like revive it on their own, keep it alive, maybe not necessarily for, I mean, I think that, you know, there was this crusading, you know, justice seeking element also to the tabloid press, but really for the purposes of making a splash and sell newspapers, and it was the Daily Mirror who actually succeeded four years after this, this case had kind of gone away and, and brought it back and kind of inserted itself into the case.

Joe: worked in concert with the authorities and, you know, so really like this wild murder case may have just completely have been lost to time back then if this kind of mischievous crusading tabloid newspaper hadn't gone and done the digging and dug up some evidence that was, you know, a little dubious but compelling enough to convince the authorities to reopen the case.

Joe: So it shows, I think, the way that the press can influence the proceedings of a criminal investigation that probably happens. to an extent, although of course there's the ethical landscape of journalism is different now than it was in the 1920s overall. But yeah, you know, I think crime and media coverage go hand in hand back to the days when there was like, you know, murder pamphlets, right, moving before newspapers.

Joe: Your case, though, didn't involve much national media coverage, at least, right? 

Katherine: None. No national media coverage. And like I said, only literally. Three stories in the Cedar Rapids Gazette. And it's interesting because as I was reporting the story, I thought it was a function of the time. I was like, okay, well, so I guess in, you know, the 60s and 70s, it, like, people didn't care about true crime in the way that they do today.

Katherine: Paula was beautiful, blonde. 

Joe: She was the archetype, right, of the victim. 

Katherine: Exactly. And so I just assumed, like, okay, well this was just a different time, they weren't interested in it. But then I read Becky Cooper's We Keep the Dead Close about Jane Hitton, I believe is her name. And she also disappeared, or was murdered, in like 1969, I think, or maybe 68.

Katherine: She was a queer woman. co ed at the Harvard Sister School, which I'm blanking on right now. And her case was national news like every day across the country. It was a humongous deal. And when I, when I read the book, I was like, Oh, that's so crazy because there's so many similarities in their situations.

Katherine: But here was the big difference. Jane's father, uh, Was the Dean of Harvard or the, or the sister school and so they were like seen as important and then going back to the conversation We just had about indigenous and black and you know Indian women Paula She was blonde and beautiful, but you know what her parents were divorced.

Katherine: Yeah, you know, her father was an insurance salesman They didn't have any money. They weren't respected in the community. So she was seen as unimportant You know, does that happen today in the same way? I don't know. 

Joe: Well, I think, you know, some of the, you know, the Murdoch murder story in South Carolina, again, involves this prominent family getting a lot of attention.

Joe: In New Jersey, the case of the attorney who's connected to Republican politics, that was a New York Times Magazine story. There was a WNYC podcast about it more recently. You know, these, these, these, I think stories about that have a connection to power and influence are always going to get a lot more attention.

Joe: In my case, a hundred years ago, prominent Episcopal reverend married to a very wealthy woman with this august lineage and, you know, kind of local socialite family. I mean, you know, Lynn, the Lindbergh kidnapping a few years later, one of the biggest true crime stories, you know, of the, of the 20th century, you know.

Joe: How many stories about a missing baby would make that sort of connection? Capture the public imagination in such a way, if it wasn't the, you know, child of the most famous man in the world. This makes me think of stories that are too grim. And for me, that's, that's one of the subject matters that I find really difficult to engage with as a father of young school aged children.

Joe: What about for you? Are there certain like, you know, you know, true crime that as a reader or even as You know, someone who would pursue a story that would just be like too fraught for you to, to engage with. Oh, no, 

Katherine: that's my answer too. 100 percent is children. I actually, very early on when I decided I was going to write true crime, I was like, well, shoot, I better read some.

Katherine: And I picked up, uh, James Elroy's book, My Dark Places. So his mother was murdered in California, I think when he was a young boy. And this book is his memoir and he's trying to both process the loss of his mother and sort of investigate it. And the book is just, it's unbelievable in that it's like 500 pages of murders of women.

Katherine: All like, all within like five square miles in California. It's bananas the number. of assaults and crimes there were. And I'm sitting there reading this book, paging through, paging through, no problems, right? I'm, you know, I mean, I'm affected, but I'm not, like, affected. And then suddenly, I get to this case where a toddler I mean, I can't even tell this story, it's so horrific.

Katherine: Dies with the mother, and I am weeping in my room. And, I mean, this was also right after I'd had my son, so. But yeah, I'm, uh, 100%. I cannot, I can't do this. You know, I have one 

Joe: of those. There's a book called The Suspicions of Mr. Witcher by Kate Summerscale, which was turned into, you know, a big period drama crime television production.

Joe: And it's like, All the boxes, it ticks all my boxes. It's an old Victorian British, you know, detective mystery, but it's about the murder of a three year old child and it's, you know, it's kind of like in the historical true crime genre. It's sort of a classic and I own it, but I don't think I can, I've read another of Kate Somerskill's.

Joe: Books, which I found on the shelf at Watchung. Booksellers on the cover, um, compelled me to buy it, but this, this previous book of hers, I think I'll have to wait until my children are older to pick it up because it's too, too close to home and probably even in general for, you know, I think children is a, is a difficult one, but let's talk about some books that we are excited about reading in the genre or not.

Joe: I have a few that are sort of historical true crime books 

Katherine: that 

Joe: I, that are, that are fresh and new that I'd love to recommend. One is The Witch of New York. And this is a story about, actually this one, there is a young child who dies, but the story is more the focus. It's more the story of a woman who is accused of the murder of her sister in law and her sister in law's child.

Joe: And it's about sort of the way that the penny press in mid 1800s New York made this kind of thing. You know, evil witch like character of this woman and how that, you know, affected the trials and justice and all that. But again, it's a dark, old, uh, and it's, you know, it's also very much about kind of the birth of sensational tabloid style sort of papering.

Joe: So, I'm halfway through that. And then, A Gentleman and a Thief. by Dean Jobe. And this is another jazz age crime story, but not about murder. It's about this incredibly successful and prolific jewel thief who, you know, managed to insert himself, named Arthur Barry, managed to insert himself into society and, and rob the jewels of Rockefellers, uh, you know, at a famous heist at the Plaza Hotel.

Joe: So it's a really like extravagant story of, of Gatsby like, jazz aged excess and this kind of thief who is sort of like an anti hero that doesn't kill people, steals from only steals from incredibly wealthy people who could probably afford it. So it's kind of, you know, in terms of crime, in terms of the villain, it's someone that you, you know, can kind of root for a little bit.

Joe: That's a fun one. And then coming out in September, I'm excited about Abbott Caller's next book, Eden. Undone, which sounds like it's going to be, I don't, I have the galley in hand, but I haven't started reading it yet. And this one is about this attempt to set up this utopian colony in the 1930s, the lead up to World War II.

Joe: These, these three different sets of Europeans kind of went to the Galapagos and tried to establish this utopian colony away from the horrors that were unfolding. And it's, you know, one of them is like an Austrian baroness and there's a doctor from Berlin, but in any case, um, on this remote island, I, I believe that murder and intrigue and other sorts of things ensue, so it sounds like a really juicy tale.

Joe: And I think there's also, separately, I think Ron Howard has a point. Film coming out about the same topic, so I think this that book will be on the radar for sure in the fall. What about you? 

Katherine: Well, it's interesting because uh, I've sort of like turned away. Those are some great true crime recommendations.

Katherine: And I've sort of like turned away from true crime a little bit in that people ask me all the time like okay So what's your what is your next book true crime? And it seems that, you know, true crime isn't my ballywick, it's pregnant teenage girls. Uh huh. Uh, so, cause, uh, I didn't say this earlier, but Paula, uh, was pregnant when she disappeared.

Katherine: Yeah. Or was very likely pregnant when she disappeared. And this was, of course, before Roe, and so that affected her case greatly. But, so my next book is about, uh, A bunch of pregnant teenage girls who live in a maternity home in the 1960s. But so I've been reading sort of books along those lines. So my recommendations are Alice McDermott's new book, Absolution, which is about the wives of the higher up soldiers in Vietnam in the 1960s.

Katherine: I thought it was fantastic. Sort of gets into what it was like to to be there but not be a part of you know the conflict in a way to be like more of an observer but the main character of that book is trying to get pregnant and there's a number of bodily examples of you know what it is to be a woman who's pregnant.

Katherine: who is trying to have a baby. And then my second book is a Claire Keegan's book, Small Things Like These, which is also, it's, this takes place in Ireland and it's about, I mean like very loosely about a maternity home. There's sort of a maternity home in the background and you see, it's a very slender book, like I don't even think it's a hundred pages, but it's absolutely beautifully written and it's told from the perspective of a husband and a mother.

Katherine: You sort of find out that he's tied to the home and then also goes to the home and it's just this beautiful story. And then sort of outside of that wheelhouse is, and I've been recommending this book to everyone, is Hurricane Season by Fernanda Melchor. She's a Mexican writer and this book is about quote, I'm using quote marks here, a quote, which is like a very core.

Katherine: town in Mexico and the witch gets murdered in the beginning of the book and then you sort of circle it from the perspective of a number of the townspeople. It's an amazing, so Fernanda Melchor doesn't use paragraphs or really sentences. And, like, there's, I think the book is maybe two chapters. Of, 

Joe: like, Stream of Consciousness.

Joe: So it's just, like, 

Katherine: words. Like the last 

Joe: chapter of Ulysses, sort of, thing. You, like, open 

Katherine: it up and it's just, like, blocks. And so the first time, of course, I opened it, I was like, Ah! And I, like, threw it across the room because the idea of, like, sitting with that was just too daunting for me. But then, weeks later, when I finally, like, read the first word, it was like, I couldn't stop.

Katherine: Like, it's incredible. So those are my recommendations. Yeah, 

Joe: no, I think you've outdone me with interesting things. Fascinating forms. 

Katherine: Oh, well, I don't know, but, um, it was so nice to have this conversation. Yeah, this was fun. 

Joe: Good to, good to catch up on all of this and I'll see you at the pool. 

Katherine: Yep. 100%. Thank you, Joe.

Marni: Thanks, Joe and Kathryn. We loved all of your insights into true crime and can't wait to see what you guys write next. And listeners, you can find all the books they mention in our show notes and at watchungbooksellers. com. 

Kathryn: Before we go, I want to remind you of a couple of our upcoming events. Tomorrow, July 17th, we are excited to host Haley Krischer for her first novel for adults, Where Are You, Echo Blue.

Kathryn: She'll be talking with Ella Dawson, author of 

Marni: But How Are You Really? And don't forget to register for the Montclair Public Library Foundation's send off karaoke party for Janet Torsney on July 25th at Tierney's Tavern here in Montclair. Register and pick your tunes ahead of time. 

Kathryn: You can find out more about all of our upcoming events in our newsletter, show notes, and at watchungbooksellers.

Kathryn: com. Recording and editing at Silverstream Studio in Montclair, New Jersey. Special thanks to Timmy Keleny, Bri Testa, and Derek Matthias. Original music is composed and performed by Violet Mujica. Art and design by Evelyn Moulton and research and show notes by Carolyn Shurtleff. Thanks to all the staff at Watchung Booksellers and the Kids Room for their hard work and love of books.

Kathryn: And 

Marni: thank you for listening. If you enjoy the podcast, please like, follow, and share it. You can follow us on social media at Watchung Booksellers, and if you have any questions, you can reach out to wbpodcast at watchungbooksellers. com. 

Kathryn: We'll see you next week. Until then, for the love of books, keep reading.