We Keep the Dead Close

June 1, 2020

A former New Yorker editorial staff member, now Senior Fellow at Brandeis's Schuster Institute for Investigative Reporting, Cooper was a Harvard undergrad when she first heard stories about the 1969 murder of graduate student Jane Britton, daughter of Radcliffe's vice president, four decades earlier. Here she unwinds a story that has nothing to do with the love-gone-wrong rumors and maybe even the 2018 case-closed ruling, instead focusing on Harvard's ingrained gender inequality and institutional self-regard. With a 150,000-copy first printing.

Copyright 2020 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from September 7, 2020
In this mesmerizing debut, former New Yorker staffer Cooper recounts her pursuit of justice for Jane Britton, a 23-year-old Harvard anthropology grad student who was murdered in her Cambridge, Mass., apartment in 1969. After Britton didn’t show up for an exam, her boyfriend and Britton’s neighbors found her bludgeoned body face-down on her bed. The red powder on the corpse suggested that her killer had conducted an ancient burial ritual and was someone with “an intimate knowledge of anthropology.” The crime made headlines nationally, but despite multiple suspects, including a Harvard archaeology professor rumored to have had an affair with Britton, no one was charged. Cooper, who learned of the mystery in 2009 when she was a junior at Harvard, became obsessed with it and pursued leads pointing to a link between Britton’s killing and a similar murder of a woman in Harvard Square committed a month later. Her dogged effort to access police files was the impetus for DNA testing that yielded proof of the killer’s identity in 2018. Cooper does a superior job of alternating her present-day investigation with flashbacks depicting Britton’s life and the initial police inquiries. In addition to presenting a tense narrative, she delves into the phenomenon and morality of true crime fandom. This twist-filled whodunit is a nonfiction page-turner. Agent: Marya Spence, Janklow & Nesbit Assoc.

October 15, 2020
A former New Yorker editorial staff member documents the decade she spent investigating the unsolved 1969 murder of a female Harvard graduate student. Cooper first heard rumors of Jane Britton's murder as a junior in college in 2009, and she was immediately seized by the story, which centered around Britton's supposed affair with a married professor who allegedly killed her when she threatened to reveal details of their relationship. The more she learned about the young woman, the more she felt "connected to her with a certainty more alchemical than rational," but Cooper also worried about how far as "omnipotent" an institution as Harvard "[would] go to make sure the story stayed buried." Only after she returned to New York in 2012, however, did the author begin fully investigating the details behind Jane's grisly, quasi-ritualistic death. She returned to scouring the internet for information before going undercover that fall as a Harvard undergraduate to learn more about the married professor suspected of Britton's murder. In the months and years that followed, Cooper covertly interviewed graduate students and Jane's friends, joined an online group of amateur sleuths, and researched articles in newspapers including the Harvard Crimson. Details emerged that not only complicated the story, but revealed other suspects as well as a tangled web of personal secrets and systemic betrayals on the parts of Harvard and law enforcement. Jane's story became less about the fact of a murder mystery that DNA evidence eventually solved in 2018 and more about institutional sexism, academic corruption and abuse, and the seductive power of narrative. Interspersed throughout with photos and riveting plot twists, this book succeeds as both a true-crime story and a powerful portrait of a young woman's remarkable quest for justice. An intricately crafted and suspenseful book sure to please any fan of true crime--and plenty of readers beyond.

COPYRIGHT(2020) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Starred review from October 15, 2020
Former New Yorker staffer Cooper was a Harvard undergrad in 2009 when she first heard the story. In 1969, a doctoral anthropology student missed her exams and was found murdered. A prime suspect, the rumor went, was a professor still tenured at the university. No small tale from the start, what really happened to Jane Britton?in reality an unsolved murder?obsessed Cooper from then on and became the deeply researched story that grows and shape-shifts, amoeba-like, in the pages of this book. Cooper introduces the witty and outspoken Jane and a winding queue of suspects, revealing twists, new leads, and dead ends with narrative suspense. She gets to know Jane's brother and friends and many people involved with the case, and even goes on an anthropological dig to get a feel for Jane's chosen path. While readers know early on that the case was solved in 2018, they'll be gripped in getting there. In her work of excavation, Cooper seeks ideas of power and truth, and the outer limits of our human desire to be present, somehow, in the past.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)