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Title: Hell in the Heartland: Murder, Meth, and the Case of Two Missing Girls
Author: Jax Miller
Narrator: Amy Landon
Published: Penguin Audio, 2020
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 345
Total Page Count: 531,180
Text Number: 1945
Read Because: personal enjoyment, audiobook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: A cold-case investigation into the disappearance of two teen girls after the murder and arson that killed one girl's parents. This ticks two distinctive true crime boxes: extremely overwritten, largely to build a sense of place and to center the victims; author inserted into the text, exploring the personal cost of the investigation. Neither of these are objective flaws, but they also demand a strong voice and a certain restraint, and Miller manages that ... okay-ish. It's a thorough, compassionate approach to the many complications (police incompetence and corruption; drug use and cultural values in rural Oklahoma) of the case; it also runs overlong and turns purple. Not my favorite example of the style, but I appreciate true crime that places a case within its cultural context, and this does a lot in that effort.
Author: Jax Miller
Narrator: Amy Landon
Published: Penguin Audio, 2020
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 345
Total Page Count: 531,180
Text Number: 1945
Read Because: personal enjoyment, audiobook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: A cold-case investigation into the disappearance of two teen girls after the murder and arson that killed one girl's parents. This ticks two distinctive true crime boxes: extremely overwritten, largely to build a sense of place and to center the victims; author inserted into the text, exploring the personal cost of the investigation. Neither of these are objective flaws, but they also demand a strong voice and a certain restraint, and Miller manages that ... okay-ish. It's a thorough, compassionate approach to the many complications (police incompetence and corruption; drug use and cultural values in rural Oklahoma) of the case; it also runs overlong and turns purple. Not my favorite example of the style, but I appreciate true crime that places a case within its cultural context, and this does a lot in that effort.
