Read-Handed: Plagiarism, puppy-napping, and police corruption
the true crime that's worth your time
Read-Handed is our occasional feature updating you on true-crime books, listens, research etc. that we're in the middle of right now. We hope you'll add YOUR recent reads -- whether you dug the book or DNF'd it partway through -- and what you're looking forward to, too.
new section! ...what's on sale at Exhibit B. Books rn
I've got a fundraiser on for the L.A. County Library -- anything tagged "California," "Hollywood," "Los Angeles," AND/OR "libraries are magic" is 20% off, and all gross proceeds from those sales go in the kitty. Need non-Cali true crime but want to help? Leave a tip at checkout with a note for what it's for; I'll add that to our total as well.
Books by the current featured author, Kathryn Casey, are also 20% off.
Slowly working my way through recent acquisitions; here's where you can keep an eye on those. (Still not seeing what you need? Search help is free, always.)
just finished
Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space, Adam Higginbotham // Not really true crime, although there were lawsuits and there's certainly an argument to be made that there was criminal negligence. I read Higginbotham's Chernobyl book recently as well; he's very good at giving you historical and organizational context without losing momentum, which in a book where you "know the ending" is crucial.
"It Should’ve Been a Routine Procedure. Instead, a Young Mother Became a Victim of Texas’s Broken Medical System," Texas Monthly // The case shares more than one element in common with the first season of the Dr. Death podcast...including a host/author, Laura Beil.
"The Missing Landlord," Curbed // I am 100 percent not trying to victim-blame when I marvel at how consistently the broken-fridge-spoiled-meat story always works. I understand why it works -- the alternative explanation is very much not preferred -- but the protagonist in Ian Frisch's account of an apartment "deal" in Houston that turned out to be anything but is awfully willing to look at a "viscid" "reddish-brown" liquid and still accept the leaky-freezer version. Which says more about the razor's edge many folks are living on housing-wise than anything else, of course.
"Did a Best-Selling Romantasy Novelist Steal Another Writer’s Story?", The New Yorker 6 January // Katy Waldman on the copyright-infringement lawsuit against Tracy Wolff's Crave series, and the fact that the genre's tropes make it hard to prove plagiarism/IP theft.
The genre's popularity has also created conditions that reward -- and may even require -- an assembly-line mentality towards writing:
Authors identify the most irresistible tropes and reproduce them as efficiently as possible. The book blogger and author Jenny Trout told me that, “in romantasy, copycats are commonplace. Authors are giving the people what they want, but it’s also like you’re reading the same book over and over again.”"A Queens woman trusted a 'Star Sitter' on Rover. Then her dog went missing," Gothamist // I hope little Phoebe is okay and "just" got stolen by a dog-lover with poor impulse control. The piece initially struck me as local-news scare-mongering directed at a populace very primed to fear the worst: helicopter pet parents, and I don't exclude myself from that descriptor (just ask my husband).
But it spoke to me on another level, to that feeling as we embark on the upcoming administration that a lot of the rules and regulations we take for granted, to protect us and our children/elders/companion animals, are fixing to wither away and leave us in an Upton Sinclair-ian tort-topia with no recourse.
current reads
still working on
KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps, Nikolaus Wachsmann
next up
Free: My Search For Meaning by Amanda Knox, out in March // "Amanda Knox reflects on her world-famous confinement in an Italian prison—and her return to an 'ordinary' life—to reveal hard-won truths about purpose and fulfillment that will resonate with anyone who has ever felt trapped in their own circumstances." Knox's Bluesky is cracking me up lately.
Michael Cannell's Blood and the Badge // It dropped a couple days ago; I wasn't sure there was much else to say about the "Mafia cops," but former NYT editor Cannell turned some fresh soil, and it's well blurbed. He talked to USA Today about "today's Mob" and his reporting process.
Any notes on these texts 'n' tomes? Need therapy for your teetering TBR stack? Scroll down to the comments.