We Keep the Dead Close by Becky Cooper is a brilliantly idiosyncratic variant of generic true crime, rather more a memoir than a conventional work of reportage, so structured that the revelation of the murderer is not the conclusion or even the most important feature of the book ... We Keep the Dead Close resembles a Möbius strip in which the more information the author accumulates, the less certain she is of its worth ... Throughout We Keep the Dead Close there is a dramatically sustained tension between the subject ('unsolved murder, Jane Britton') and its (secret) meaning in the life of the young female investigative reporter ... Like a skilled mystery novelist, Cooper presents her cast of suspects in so beguiling a way ... We Keep the Dead Close shares an impassioned advocacy for victims of injustice at Harvard with William Wright’s Harvard’s Secret Court: The Savage 1920 Purge of Campus Homosexuals ... While much that Cooper uncovers in her private pursuit of the case is fascinating in itself, not least her interviews with Lamberg-Karlovsky and other 'persons of interest' for whom the case of Jane Britton was never allowed to go cold, it is the revelation of the murderer that is most unexpected ... It’s fitting that Cooper’s beautifully composed elegy for Jane Britton ends with Britton’s own words.
This is not your typical true crime book, and that’s very much a good thing ... a stunning achievement—a whodunit page turner with an unexpected ending that is both shocking and, sadly, a little disappointing ... This was one of the best books of 2020. Author Becky Cooper’s quest to learn the truth about Jane Britton’s 50-year-old unsolved murder is a fascinating journey that ultimately leads to any number of truths about murder, relationships, justice, misogyny and powerful institutions.
... exhaustive and extraordinary ... The most noteworthy element of Cooper’s book might be its reportorial ambition. Over 400 pages, she doggedly tracks down primary sources and digs for decades-old documents. It is a testament to her skills as a writer that she is able to connect the threads of the cold case to larger cultural issues ... Cooper has made a welcome entry into the annals of true crime ... [Cooper] carefully investigates every lead, reports every fact and contextualizes for the reader the culture that gave rise to the original story. If it is possible to write responsibly about the past, then surely [Cooper's] done it.
... an over 400-page true crime book that's overstuffed with suspects, motives, red herrings and interviews — as well as Cooper's first-person meditations about her own fascination with the case ... Reading We Keep the Dead Close is akin to what I imagine it would be like to dive into a trench at an archaeological site and start digging, not with a trowel, but with a snow shovel. Cooper unearths tons of information here, but not every artifact deserves preserving. Indeed, by the time the case is closed in 2018 thanks to new developments in DNA testing, there's a feeling of exhaustion rather than satisfaction ... Had Cooper sifted more judiciously through this detail, We Keep the Dead Close would have been a more memorable true crime narrative. But, even in its unfiltered state, the book offers a vivid profile of one of the most prominent villains of this piece — one that to a degree still remains at large. That would be the sexist culture of academia, particularly at its most elite levels ... Cooper is an obsessive and identifies fiercely with her subject. Even when this book threatens to buckle under the weight of detail, Cooper's resolve to excavate the truth about Britton's murder will keep a reader engaged enough to want to follow this case to its unexpected conclusion.
... fits the genre of true crime only partially, bearing little resemblance, for example, to Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, in which the author, a master manipulator of plot, character and scene, conceals himself, the better to immerse the reader in time and place. Ms. Cooper’s, by contrast, is a quest narrative, with an angsty young protagonist and fractured storytelling along the lines of the podcast Serial. When Ms. Cooper describes her war room, covered with 'theories and photos, a map of Iran, a blueprint of an apartment building, all stuck to my cork boards with dissection needles,' she sounds like Carrie Mathison of Homeland, flirting with the porous boundary between commitment and mania ... Britton has now been dead more than twice as long as she lived. Felled when her adult life had barely begun, she is hard to see as more than the sum of others’ unfilled needs and hazy memories, especially when her chronicler seems so often to turn shards of evidence into mirrors. But when she emerges, in flickers, her character is as tantalizing and as fleeting as her smile.
... an impressively granular investigation of this shocking and perplexing case. Admirably, Cooper tries to do two things — tell the story of Britton’s murder and seek justice for her ... the investigation’s details are frequently overshadowed by Cooper’s troubled relationship to the case: She wants to extract a story from the past that both makes logical sense and points, as the clues do, to knowledge of ancient life. This leads her down various rabbit holes, guessing at narratives that may not fit with the truth of the case and questioning her own assumptions as she does so ... Cooper should be lauded for her investigative abilities — there is no question that she has earned her spot among the ranks of detectives and reporters who have spent decades obsessed with the Britton case ... While We Keep the Dead Close is hardly smitten with its villains, it does spend much of its 400-plus pages trying to get inside their heads, occasionally causing the narrative to stray from rigorous investigation into the realm of eye-popping speculation ... It’s in discussing the misogyny of academia and the politics of Harvard that Cooper shines the brightest ... In Cooper’s capable hands, Harvard, with all its prestige and palace intrigue, is as much a character in the book as her suspects and interviewees, guilty of sidelining Britton and protecting the men who tormented her ... the story of Britton is also a story of extreme privilege: Her family was from a well-to-do Boston suburb, and her father held a high-ranking position at Radcliffe. Of course, this doesn’t mean Britton’s story shouldn’t be told; rather, it begs consideration of why it’s being told, why Britton was memorialized in a way that many women of a different race and class would not have been. Had Cooper approached this question with the same interrogative spirit with which she approached her own narrative assumptions, the book would have felt more complete ... doesn’t conclude with the revelation we were expecting. I won’t disclose the ending here, to preserve the suspense. That said, the book is more than just a mystery: It’s a meditation on academia, womanhood and the power of storytelling. Even though Cooper may not always thread the narrative needle exactly as she wants, she’s proved herself more than capable of letting the artifacts of the past speak for themselves.
In some ways, Becky Cooper’s true crime book We Keep the Dead Close gives in to some of the genre’s worst impulses. Cooper spends a ton of time explaining her investigative process in lieu of just telling readers what happened, she includes seemingly irrelevant personal details about her life, she sometimes reduces the central murder victim in her story to a cipher, and she covers a crime that was solved while she was reporting on it — so anyone who gets bored can just look up 'the ending' online ... What ultimately makes the book great is that, in Cooper’s case, all of these choices are very much intentional. We Keep the Dead Close is the rare work that functions as both a really strong example of the genre it exists in and a critique of that genre. It’s a true crime book that isn’t sure of anyone’s need for a true crime book ... becomes almost a meditation on why books like this exist in the first place. Her comparison of the Jane Britton story to a folk tale is apt: We often use stories about grisly murders as a kind of warning about the darkness at society’s core.
Becky Cooper, formerly of the New Yorker, has already drawn comparisons to In Cold Blood with her true crime masterpiece...and for good reason ... She perseveres mightily in her investigation, driven in part by the way she identifies with the quirky, complicated victim. This identification may draw in readers who see themselves in Jane, too. But for others, the author’s embrace of a stranger who died 50 years prior may never quite gel. The book is strongest when we’re empathizing with Jane—her romantic foibles, grappling with sexism within academia—rather than with the author. For aspiring journalists, Cooper’s impressive work in We Keep the Dead Close is a masterclass on how to do investigative reporting. She dug deep into archival research and interviewed most everyone involved in the case, drawing uncomfortable information out of her sources with particular skill while still withholding judgment ... The resolution, when it comes, is as unexpected as it is heartbreaking.
... [a] powerful, searching book ... this book is more ambitious than the run-of-the-mill true crime narrative seen so frequently these days. For one thing, Cooper is a stylish and fearless writer, relentlessly self-interrogating. She’s smart enough to examine her own motives in searching for the truth about Jane’s life ...The book is at its most solid when Jane’s old friends talk about her—they are enduringly loyal—and their feelings seem to rub off on the author. ... In the end, Jane’s mystery is at least partially solved (though questions will likely always remain). But Cooper remains unsatisfied ... one hopes that Cooper, with her searching curiosity and probing questions, will soon find another [crime] to examine.
... the personhood of a 'victim' can get lost amid endless details of sleuthing, records and police procedural. Becky Cooper’s gripping literary nonfiction debut...admirably avoids this mistake and never lets us forget the lived experience of Jane Britton ... a compelling portrait of a woman’s life cut short—as well as a fascinating exposé of a prestigious enclave within the country’s most elite institution ... When breakthroughs arrive late in the process, Cooper movingly evokes the emotional impact on all those affected, herself included. Less effective is the writer’s choice to compare her own romantic relationship to Jane Britton’s, which reads as appended instead of meaningful. Britton’s own words are more stirring ... an engrossing, monumental work.
The bones of an intriguing true-crime narrative are all here, but Cooper is at least equally interested in introducing readers to the highs and lows of her own investigation: the exciting leads, the dead ends, the many complicated people she comes to know. Cooper skillfully recounts the thrill of a new suspect coming to light or fresh information allowing for a different, potentially revealing, angle on Jane's murder. And, as her investigation slips deep into tangents, she is able to use the murder as a jumping-off point for a wide range of issues ... Cooper's impressive research allows her to examine the claustrophobic world of archeology and, in particular, the incredibly tense archeological digs Jane participated in that some thought were key to her fate. In one of the most passionate aspects of the book, Cooper sees understanding the climate of sexism and misogyny as key to understanding Jane's story ... The murder at the center of the book is a rabbit hole that contains further rabbit holes, many of which the author capably leads us down. While the book is wide-ranging, there are no purposeless tangents ... a compelling investigation where every fascinating mystery seems to lead to another.
Interspersed throughout with photos and riveting plot twists, this book succeeds as both a true-crime story and a powerful portrait of a young woman’s remarkable quest for justice. An intricately crafted and suspenseful book sure to please any fan of true crime—and plenty of readers beyond.
Cooper does a superior job of alternating her present-day investigation with flashbacks depicting Britton’s life and the initial police inquiries. In addition to presenting a tense narrative, she delves into the phenomenon and morality of true crime fandom. This twist-filled whodunit is a nonfiction page-turner.
