This Book Will Bury Me

The world of amateur true-crime investigators—and what a populous world it seems to be!—is given its own investigation in Winstead’s (Midnight is the Darkest Hour, 2023) latest, with the author using murders at a sorority house to show who benefits from and who’s destroyed by the trend of podcasters as police. Readers enter through the screen of Janeway Sharp (Star Trek fandom plays a big role here), the youngest of a group that calls itself the Real Crime Network. She’s drawn to the work after the sudden death of her beloved father and grows an obsession with true crime even though she feels it is wrong. In the Network, she finds forgiving and encouraging brethren who are only too happy to accompany her into the frightening details surrounding the murder of three sorority sisters who were stabbed and left in a bloodbath. Jane, now called Searcher, and her companions can’t stay away from the college town in question, Delphine, Idaho. Readers are taken to new viewpoints along with them, meeting the families in question, the townspeople who are suddenly besieged by murder groupies, and the police and FBI, who are willing to take the help when the Network starts to be successful. Suspects, twists, and danger add to the media-cult side of the tale, adding up to a smart whodunit with a side of contemplation.