An Unexplained Death

June 1, 2018

Brottman's (humanities, Maryland Inst. Coll. of Art; The Maximum Security Book Club) interesting ideas and thoughts form an inconsistent narrative that jumps from hotel history to unsolved mystery to memoir and back again. The author starts with her discovery of a missing-persons poster and from there becomes not obsessed (she makes this clear) but devoted to seeking of the truth about the disappearance of Rey Rivera, who was found dead on the property of the historic Belvedere Hotel. The police rule it a suicide, but Brottman keeps digging, uncovering a potential conspiracy involving corporate fraud, millionaires, and warnings. Throughout the investigation, she sprinkles in her own reservations about her ability to be socially invisible to others, and how the Belvedere has a long history of suicides, some questionable. VERDICT Both true crime and hotel history, this book would have benefitted from concentrating purely on either the disappearance of Rivera or the hotel. For fans of James Renner's True Crime Addict and Walter Kirn's Blood Will Out.--Ryan Claringbole, Wisconsin Dept. of Pub. Instruction, Madison

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from July 2, 2018
The 2006 death of handsome newlywed Rey O. Rivera serves as the focal point of this mesmerizing true crime account. Brottman (The Great Grisby) never met Rivera, but she lives in the Belvedere, an apartment complex in Baltimore where his body was found, and her morbid curiosity results in a decade-long obsessive, informal investigation of his death. Rivera was missing for over a week before his body was discovered in a locked office, having fallen through a hole in the roof of the building’s extension. According to the autopsy report, which ruled the death a suicide, Rivera had jumped off the roof of the main building, creating the hole on impact. As Brottman looks into the case, she learns that the people in Rivera’s life don’t believe he killed himself—he was about to start a family with his wife, made plans for the weekend just before disappearing, and showed no indication of depression. Her suspicions deepen when she learns the police report of his death has gone missing, as has the building’s surveillance footage from the night of Rivera’s death. In the end, Brottman hires a private investigator to aid in her quest for answers, and his conclusions end up being rather anticlimactic compared to the suspense of the author’s investigation. In addition to the crime element, Brottman adds an alluring layer to the narrative by interrogating her own preoccupation with death and suicide. The result is a page-turning look at the darker impulses of the human psyche.

September 15, 2018
The apparent suicide of a stranger becomes both the subject of an author's true-crime investigation and the catalyst for her intimate memoir.Brottman (Humanities/Maryland Institute Coll. of Art; The Maximum Security Book Club: Reading Literature in a Men's Prison, 2016, etc.) opens this compelling, often creepy book with a "Missing" poster she spotted on her morning walk, asking for information about a strikingly handsome young man named Rey Rivera. His image stuck with her, and when his decomposing body was found in an unoccupied office in the building where Brottman lives, an obsession was born. That building is the Belvedere Hotel, a Baltimore landmark built in 1903. Rivera went off the top of the 13-story building and plunged through the roof of a smaller building. By all accounts, Rivera was a happy newlywed with a thriving business, a former Olympic-caliber water polo player who charmed everyone; in short, he was an unlikely candidate for suicide. Brottman, a scholar and psychoanalyst who often writes about true crime, spent a decade trying to understand his death, meeting mysteries at nearly every turn. Why did the Baltimore police seemingly conduct only a cursory investigation? Did Rivera's death have anything to do with his former employment with Agora, a multimillion-dollar financial advising firm entangled with legal problems and conspiracy theories? Woven into Rivera's story is the author's own: her striking sense of being invisible to other people and her fascination with death (she catalogs historical suicides at the Belvedere). She writes of a police description of another suicide, "I felt I had found exactly what I am looking for--a crack in the surface of things that shows me the world is not the place I have assumed it to be....I am not a gawker: I am a connoisseur."Mixing fascinating investigation and macabre memoir, this is a dark ride with substance.

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October 1, 2018
In this page-turner, a mash-up of memoir and true crime, Brottman explores a mysterious death and her own psyche. An observer of the odd, different, and discarded, Brottman is immediately intrigued by a missing poster she sees outside the Belvedere, the landmark Baltimore building where she lives. When the body of the missing man, Rey Rivera, is discovered in the Belvedere a week later, Brottman's interest becomes obsession. Rivera's death is ruled a suicide, but those closest to him don't believe this could be true. Other details, including Rivera's work at a shady financial company, further undermine this explanation. For a decade, Brottman informally investigates while also indulging her own interest in the macabre, exploring the science of suicide and the history of deaths at the Belvedere. Events unfold in real time, adding an element of suspense (that, unfortunately, feels unfulfilled with the anticlimactic conclusion). This may disappoint those seeking straightforward true crime, but those who choose books with dark subject matter, suspense, and microhistory elements will all find something to enjoy here.?(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)