Book-It 'o13! Book #34
The Fifty Books Challenge, year four! (Years one, two, three, and four just in case you're curious.) This was a library request.
Title: Lost Girls: An Unsolved American Mystery by Robert Koker
Details: Copyright 2013, Harper Collins
Synopsis (By Way of Front and Back Flaps): " Award-winning investigative reporter Robert Kolker delivers a haunting and humanizing account of the true-life search for a serial killer still at large on Long Island, in a compelling tale of unsolved murder and Internet prostitution.
One late spring evening in 2010, Shannan Gilbert, after running through the oceanfront community of Oak Beach screaming for her life, went missing. No one who had heard of her disappearance thought much about what had happened to the twenty-four-year-old: she was a Craigslist prostitute who had been fleeing a scene-of what, no one could be sure. The Suffolk County Police, too, seemed to have paid little attention-until seven months later, when an unexpected discovery in a bramble alongside a nearby highway turned up four bodies, all evenly spaced, all wrapped in burlap. But none of them Shannan's.
There was Maureen Brainard-Barnes, last seen at Penn Station in Manhattan three years earlier, and Melissa Barthelemy, last seen in the Bronx in 2009. There was Megan Waterman, last seen leaving a hotel in Hauppage, Long Island, just a month after Shannan's disappearance in 2010, and Amber Lynn Costello, last seen leaving a house in West Babylon a few months later that same year. Like Shannan, all four women were petite and in their twenties, they all came from out of town to work as escorts, and they all advertised on Craigslist and its competitor, Backpage.
In a triumph of reporting-and in a riveting narrative-Robert Kolker presents the first detailed look at the shadow world of escorts in the Internet age, where making a living is easier than ever and the dangers remain all too real. He has talked exhaustively with the friends and family of each woman to reveal the three-dimensional truths about their lives, the struggling towns they came from, and the dreams they chased. And he has gained unique access to the Oak Beach neighborhood that has found itself the focus of national media scrutiny-where the police have flailed, the body count has risen, and the neighbors have begun pointing fingers at one another. There, in a remote community, out of sight of the beaches and marinas scattered along the South Shore barrier islands, the women's stories come together in death and dark mystery. Lost Girls is a portrait not just of five women, but of unsolved murder in an idyllic part of America, of the underside of the Internet, and of the secrets we keep without admitting to ourselves that we keep them."
Why I Wanted to Read It: This received favorable attention from The AV Club's The Hater.
How I Liked It: A fairly recent unsolved string of murders that point to the work or a serial killer (or do they?), the question of sex workers' rights and protection in the internet age, the intimate workings of several families and extended families of the victims (both from up close and within to detached and the community view thereof), unidentified remains that suggest an even bigger mystery... that's quite the undertaking for a first-time author.
Frankly, that'd be quite the undertaking for an Ann Rule, wouldn't it? Still, maybe this first-time author can pull it out.
Here's one mystery that can be solved: No. No, he can't.
The book starts off with a meandering prologue that fires important names at the reader and leaves them struggling to catch up. From there, the backstory (up until her entrance into sex work) of each of the five victims, each with her own chapter, makes up Part I of "Book One." Part II is devoted to five chapters (again, one for each victim, detailing her career in sex work up until the time of her disappearance).
That's the idea, anyway. Unfortunately, keeping such a wide cast of characters is difficult and unlike Rule and other true crime documentarians, the author sticks his rudimentary cast listing in the back of the book. It's not merely the layout that causes confusion, it's the author's style of writing. The amateurish quality, while not as ridiculous as, say, some true crime sampled here this year, it's still fairly choppy and rote (and questionable: when describing the boyfriend of one of the victims, the author proceeds thusly "Jordan was tall and rain-thin, with pitch-black skin.") and that makes a troublesome format that much harder to follow.
From there, the disappearance that spawned the entire investigation is detailed in an "interlude", before launching into "Book Two," a seemingly even more incomprehensible jumble of petty gossip and backbiting between family members of the victims (with the author dutifully recording their Facebook exchanges), disparaging remarks made by suspects, police, and the press, and most puzzingly, the author devotes a considerable amount of time to documenting web conspiracy theorist messageboards about the case (particularly flamewars). All of this is made all the more confusing by the author's insertion of himself as he describes attending events for the families of the victims, interviewing various figures involved in the investigation both officially and unofficially, and witnessing memorials, all switching back and forth between the first and third person. Finding a narrative thread becomes an exercise of the proverbial needle in the haystack, were you having to swat off being jabbed by other needles while you searched for the first. The author documents area lore, gossip, and history in a way that serves to merely distract and pad out the book, rather than flesh out the story he's claiming to tell.
This case is utterly fascinating with twists and turns and the chill of it being unsolved (and thus the ending being unwritten). The role of the internet in prostitution and the security of sex work (and the contempt America still holds for sex workers) comes into play and into discussion in a gripping way in this case and is worth of dissection and discussion. We can only hope that one day an author will step up to the task and actually be able to fulfill it.
Notable: As communications and relations between the victims' families and police erode, one of the chief detectives offers a rather ugly observation about victims' families and talking to the media:
“"In a high-profile case, it becomes difficult," [chief detective Dominick] Varrone said, "because everybody is pounding on their doors for information. They're not sophisticated enough. After a while, you could almost see-- I don't want to pick on one family-- but some of the family members start doing their hair and dressing up. They rise to the spotlight. And they criticize us."
With [victim Shannan Gilbert's mother] Mari [Gilbert] in particular, he'd been reminded of another famous case he worked on long ago, the 1992 kidnapping of nine-year-old Katie Beers in Bay Shore, Long Island. The girl's mother, Marilyn Beers, "was a taxicab driver," Varrone said, smiling at the memory. "And then she got her hair all done up."
[Police commissioner Richard] Dormer chuckled.” (pg 332)
That would be the kidnapping detailed in Buried Memories.
Title: Lost Girls: An Unsolved American Mystery by Robert Koker
Details: Copyright 2013, Harper Collins
Synopsis (By Way of Front and Back Flaps): " Award-winning investigative reporter Robert Kolker delivers a haunting and humanizing account of the true-life search for a serial killer still at large on Long Island, in a compelling tale of unsolved murder and Internet prostitution.
One late spring evening in 2010, Shannan Gilbert, after running through the oceanfront community of Oak Beach screaming for her life, went missing. No one who had heard of her disappearance thought much about what had happened to the twenty-four-year-old: she was a Craigslist prostitute who had been fleeing a scene-of what, no one could be sure. The Suffolk County Police, too, seemed to have paid little attention-until seven months later, when an unexpected discovery in a bramble alongside a nearby highway turned up four bodies, all evenly spaced, all wrapped in burlap. But none of them Shannan's.
There was Maureen Brainard-Barnes, last seen at Penn Station in Manhattan three years earlier, and Melissa Barthelemy, last seen in the Bronx in 2009. There was Megan Waterman, last seen leaving a hotel in Hauppage, Long Island, just a month after Shannan's disappearance in 2010, and Amber Lynn Costello, last seen leaving a house in West Babylon a few months later that same year. Like Shannan, all four women were petite and in their twenties, they all came from out of town to work as escorts, and they all advertised on Craigslist and its competitor, Backpage.
In a triumph of reporting-and in a riveting narrative-Robert Kolker presents the first detailed look at the shadow world of escorts in the Internet age, where making a living is easier than ever and the dangers remain all too real. He has talked exhaustively with the friends and family of each woman to reveal the three-dimensional truths about their lives, the struggling towns they came from, and the dreams they chased. And he has gained unique access to the Oak Beach neighborhood that has found itself the focus of national media scrutiny-where the police have flailed, the body count has risen, and the neighbors have begun pointing fingers at one another. There, in a remote community, out of sight of the beaches and marinas scattered along the South Shore barrier islands, the women's stories come together in death and dark mystery. Lost Girls is a portrait not just of five women, but of unsolved murder in an idyllic part of America, of the underside of the Internet, and of the secrets we keep without admitting to ourselves that we keep them."
Why I Wanted to Read It: This received favorable attention from The AV Club's The Hater.
How I Liked It: A fairly recent unsolved string of murders that point to the work or a serial killer (or do they?), the question of sex workers' rights and protection in the internet age, the intimate workings of several families and extended families of the victims (both from up close and within to detached and the community view thereof), unidentified remains that suggest an even bigger mystery... that's quite the undertaking for a first-time author.
Frankly, that'd be quite the undertaking for an Ann Rule, wouldn't it? Still, maybe this first-time author can pull it out.
Here's one mystery that can be solved: No. No, he can't.
The book starts off with a meandering prologue that fires important names at the reader and leaves them struggling to catch up. From there, the backstory (up until her entrance into sex work) of each of the five victims, each with her own chapter, makes up Part I of "Book One." Part II is devoted to five chapters (again, one for each victim, detailing her career in sex work up until the time of her disappearance).
That's the idea, anyway. Unfortunately, keeping such a wide cast of characters is difficult and unlike Rule and other true crime documentarians, the author sticks his rudimentary cast listing in the back of the book. It's not merely the layout that causes confusion, it's the author's style of writing. The amateurish quality, while not as ridiculous as, say, some true crime sampled here this year, it's still fairly choppy and rote (and questionable: when describing the boyfriend of one of the victims, the author proceeds thusly "Jordan was tall and rain-thin, with pitch-black skin.") and that makes a troublesome format that much harder to follow.
From there, the disappearance that spawned the entire investigation is detailed in an "interlude", before launching into "Book Two," a seemingly even more incomprehensible jumble of petty gossip and backbiting between family members of the victims (with the author dutifully recording their Facebook exchanges), disparaging remarks made by suspects, police, and the press, and most puzzingly, the author devotes a considerable amount of time to documenting web conspiracy theorist messageboards about the case (particularly flamewars). All of this is made all the more confusing by the author's insertion of himself as he describes attending events for the families of the victims, interviewing various figures involved in the investigation both officially and unofficially, and witnessing memorials, all switching back and forth between the first and third person. Finding a narrative thread becomes an exercise of the proverbial needle in the haystack, were you having to swat off being jabbed by other needles while you searched for the first. The author documents area lore, gossip, and history in a way that serves to merely distract and pad out the book, rather than flesh out the story he's claiming to tell.
This case is utterly fascinating with twists and turns and the chill of it being unsolved (and thus the ending being unwritten). The role of the internet in prostitution and the security of sex work (and the contempt America still holds for sex workers) comes into play and into discussion in a gripping way in this case and is worth of dissection and discussion. We can only hope that one day an author will step up to the task and actually be able to fulfill it.
Notable: As communications and relations between the victims' families and police erode, one of the chief detectives offers a rather ugly observation about victims' families and talking to the media:
“"In a high-profile case, it becomes difficult," [chief detective Dominick] Varrone said, "because everybody is pounding on their doors for information. They're not sophisticated enough. After a while, you could almost see-- I don't want to pick on one family-- but some of the family members start doing their hair and dressing up. They rise to the spotlight. And they criticize us."
With [victim Shannan Gilbert's mother] Mari [Gilbert] in particular, he'd been reminded of another famous case he worked on long ago, the 1992 kidnapping of nine-year-old Katie Beers in Bay Shore, Long Island. The girl's mother, Marilyn Beers, "was a taxicab driver," Varrone said, smiling at the memory. "And then she got her hair all done up."
[Police commissioner Richard] Dormer chuckled.” (pg 332)
That would be the kidnapping detailed in Buried Memories.