True Crime Reviews: Red River Girl, Jolly; Autopsy of a Crime Lab Garrett; She Said, Kantor & Twohey

[juushika]

You may be noticing a trend & that trend is that I've been chewing through true crime while painting. These are also from the great living room project. I tend to grab audiobooks from the currently available pile because I need one now, not later; but going through this many currently availables means I'm reading more broadly: not looking for the pick of the pile, but grabbing anything that a cursory search indicates isn't awful. And I'm not mad about it, because audio reads so passively and fast; bad ones are almost harmless, and mediocre ones (especially mediocre writing, as in Autopsy of a Crime Lab) can't overstay a welcome but can still provide interesting insight. Especially in true crime, where many books on the topic can, of course, be desensitizing, but also educational: more context, a greater impression of the trends, more room for further reading as, again, in Autopsy of a Crime Lab.


Title: Red River Girl: The Life and Death of Tina Fontaine
Author: Joanna Jolly
Narrator: Penelope Rawlins
Published: Viking, 2019
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 305
Total Page Count: 395,650
Text Number: 1497
Read Because: listening to true crime while painting walls, audiobook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: An informative but wildly unsatisfying book about one of the higher-profile cases in the endemic of racially-motivated crimes against indigenous women in Canada ... meeting some just plain bad, blindered, and unethical policing. It's a hot mess of a case: it drew crucial attention to a horrific problem, but when police are so universally bad at their job, the results of that attention are limited. I can't expect Jolly to provide a solution, but I wish she addressed the problem more explicitly. Nonetheless I found this productive; I hadn't previously read much about this crisis, and what I learned was educational if not, I think, unique to this book in particular.


Title: Autopsy of a Crime Lab: Exposing the Flaws in Forensics
Author: Brandon L. Garrett
Narrator: Joel Richards
Published: Tantor Audio, 2021
Rating: 3.5 of 5
Page Count: 265
Total Page Count: 398,135
Text Number: 1504
Read Because: listening to morbid nonfiction while painting walls, audiobook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: An invaluable, thorough examination of the role of forensics in the American legal system: the misplaced trust put in them, the terrible consequences, and the concrete actions which can be taken to improve the situation. Also horribly written, especially on audio; short segments and topic-hopping make for so much repetition. Recommended nonetheless.


Title: She Said: Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story That Helped Ignite a Movement
Author: Jodi Kantor, Megan Twohey
Narrator: Rebecca Lowman
Published: Penguin Audio, 2019
Rating: 4.5 of 5
Page Count: 330
Total Page Count: 398,465
Text Number: 1505
Read Because: listening to true crime while painting walls, audiobook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: The New York Times reporters who broke the Harvey Weinstein sexual abuse accusations discuss this reporting, the culture that gave birth to it, and the culture it left in its wake. Reporting is so much work and it makes for a surprisingly engaging narrative (I read this not long after Renner's Amy: My Search for Her Killer, a very different story of very different investigative reporting—also a lot of work; between the two I've learned a lot). But what I appreciate most is the larger content, starting with the #MeToo Movement and stretching as far as Kavanaugh's election to the Supreme Court (an endpoint which is only more relevant since Roe v. Wade was overturned): an evolving, modern understanding of sexism, sexual harassment, and victim testimony as they influence and influenced by journalism. Compelling, readable, blindly rage-inducing. Ashley Judd is a champion.