Death of a Bookseller · Airbnb · Ugly Houses

Brogan Roach, one of the two main characters in Alice Slater’s debut novel Death of a Bookseller, has a favorite serial killer. Roach — who goes by her last name, embracing the connection to the creepy bugs — wears merch from true crime podcasts nearly every day. She derides most of the fans of those podcasts as “normies,” only liking what’s trendy and unable to stomach the gory details she craves about the murders she’s obsessed with.

In short, Roach is exactly the type of true-crime fan that makes me uncomfortable. She has no interest in engaging with the complexities surrounding the genre she loves; she simply wants lurid descriptions about death and destruction.