We Keep the Dead Close

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.

Author and narrator Becky Cooper's magnificent audiobook chronicles her meticulous and deeply personal investigation of a fifty-year-old murder case. In 1969, Harvard graduate student Jane Britton was found violently murdered in her apartment. The story of her unsolved murder became something of a Harvard myth, passed along for decades, with an eccentric and inscrutable archaeology professor as the main suspect. Cooper first heard about Jane Britton in 2009. She felt a growing kinship with the enigmatic Jane and became determined to learn the truth about her murder. While her narration is not showy, Cooper successfully conveys the complicated range of emotions she experienced on what eventually became a ten-year personal and professional odyssey. Cooper's well-researched, suspenseful, and empathetic account is true crime at its finest. A.T.N. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award � AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine