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SHORTLISTED FOR THE CRIME WRITERS' ASSOCIATION ALCS GOLD DAGGER FOR NON-FICTION
'Brilliant and extraordinary' Philippe Sands
'Astonishing ... Cooper is one hell of a detective' Alex Marzano-Lesnevich, author of The Fact of a Body
'Seductive ... Haunting' Ariel Levy, author of The Rules Do Not Apply
In 1969, Jane Britton, an ambitious graduate student at Harvard, was found bludgeoned to death in her apartment. A whisper network kept Jane's story alive: a rumour of an affair with a professor that ended in tragedy when Britton threatened to expose him.
Forty years later, when curious undergrad Becky Cooper first heard the story, she felt compelled to find out more. We Keep the Dead Close is an account of her complex and fascinating investigation spanning a decade.
About the author
Becky Cooper is a former New Yorker writer, assistant to David Remnick, Adam Gopnik and D.T. Max, producer for the New Yorker Radio Hour. Currently, she is artist-in-residence at Harvard University, as well as Senior Fellow at Brandeis’s Schuster Institute for Investigative Reporting. Her undergraduate thesis, a literary biography of David Foster Wallace, won Harvard’s Hoopes Prize, the highest undergraduate award for research and writing. In 2013, she published Mapping Manhattan: A Love and Sometimes Hate Story in Maps by 75 New Yorkers (Abrams), which is currently in its fifth printing.
Summary
A whisper network kept Jane's story alive: a rumour of an affair with a professor that ended in tragedy when Britton threatened to expose him. Forty years later, when curious undergrad Becky Cooper first heard the story, she felt compelled to find out more.
Report
A brilliant and extraordinary book. Philippe Sands
