We Keep the Dead Close

A brilliant and extraordinary book. – Philippe Sands
Exhilarating … Becky Cooper masterfully uncovers the story of Harvard undergrad Jane Britton * Vogue *
Exhilarating and seductive … Haunting, fascinating, and surprising. Cooper will keep you riveted.
Ambitious … A highly sophisticated investigation of a cold case mixed with elements of memoir and trendy cultural criticism. * Spectator *
This is an astonishing book: circuitous yet taut with suspense, layered yet gripping. Cooper is one hell of a detective, chasing a long-buried murder mystery not only to the victim and her killer, but to the very core of how we understand one another. Most remarkable is how contemporary and vital every bit of questioning Cooper does here feels. Jane Britton died decades ago, but in Cooper’s hands, Britton’s tragic murder teaches us about ourselves and the dangers of the institutions we uphold. – Alex Marzano-Lesnevich, author of THE FACT OF A BODY
Searching, atmospheric and ultimately entrancing … A vivid account of a notorious murder at Harvard, and a meditation on the stories that we tell ourselves about violence … With a deft touch, she interrogates not just the evidence, witnesses and suspects, but her own biases and assumptions, as well.
Top drawer investigative reporting. Riveting. A refreshing reason to sacrifice sleep. – Sarah Jessica Parker
An extraordinary piece of crime writing that’s so much more than a whodunnit. * Mail on Sunday *
A beautifully composed elegy … A brilliantly idiosyncratic variant of generic true crime. – Joyce Carol Oates * New York Review of Books *
Meticulous investigation … sparkling prose … As with all good stories, We Keep the Dead Close’s particularities seep from its pages to encompass us all. Flipping between past, present and a cast of brilliant-difficult characters … Compelling. * iNews *

Becky Cooper is a former New Yorker writer, assistant to David Remnick, Adam Gopnik and D.T. Max, and producer for The New Yorker Radio Hour. Currently, she is artist-in-residence at Harvard University and Senior Fellow at Brandeis University’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.

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