Carrie Carolyn Coco isn't a conventional crimoir

[SDB’s full review of Sarah Gerard’s new book is here, or you can get a paid subscription and see it, and all our other content, in full in your inbox!]

The crime
"On the night of September 28, 2016, twenty-five-year-old Carolyn Bush was brutally stabbed to death in her New York City apartment by her roommate Render Stetson-Shanahan, leaving friends and family of both reeling. In life, Carolyn was a gregarious, smart-mouthed aspiring poet, who had seemingly gotten along well with Render, a reserved art handler. Where had it gone so terribly wrong?" 

The story
According to Stetson-Shanahan's legal team, it's when Stetson-Shanahan smoked pot with his brother earlier that evening, and subsequently suffered a psychotic episode – not the first time something like that had happened when he smoked pot, but: also not really the question novelist Sarah Gerard is seeking an answer to in Carrie Carolyn Coco: My Friend, Her Murder, and an Obsession with the Unthinkable, out July 9 from Zando.

Gerard is maybe not looking for any answers at all, but rather to establish a catalog of remembrances of Carolyn Bush. Gerard herself explains that she and Bush