Jane Doe January

Starred review from March 21, 2016
With remarkable emotional insight and precision, mystery writer Winslow (The Red House) turns to memoir to narrate the long-delayed prosecution of the man who raped her two decades ago. When her case is reopened in 2013 by a DNA match in another case, Winslow navigates a bureaucratic nightmare of delays, observing that “waiting isn’t a sea that gradually approaches a beach; it’s a wet pit with vertical walls.” She probes the depths of rape victimhood and its social connotations, comparing expectations to “be a perfect little broken princess” with the reality of her situation. As a writer obsessed with details, Winslow researches her attacker, finding his dating site profiles and his sister’s Facebook page and noting that with each discovery he “keeps getting smaller... piece by piece.” Faced with reticent friends for whom there is “my world... and the world they live in, in which isn’t happening at all,” she develops surprisingly strong bonds with the detectives and legal team representing her case. When a personal tragedy is followed by a bombshell development in the case, Winslow must face dual griefs and seek out a new vision for closure. Her story is profoundly troubling, but the legitimate care and consideration of Winslow’s legal support system is powerfully redemptive. Her account bravely illuminates a process many survivors of rape must endure.

April 1, 2016
The story of a Pennsylvania serial rapist who stood trial two decades after his assault on the author. Mystery writer Winslow (The Red House, 2015) was a religiously chaste junior studying acting at Carnegie Mellon University in 1992 when she was violently raped in her apartment by Arthur Fryar. Police had few clues and little DNA to compare to the author's forensic evidence, so the investigation stagnated--though the victim prodded the revolving team of detectives to continue sleuthing throughout the ensuing years. Winslow arrestingly depicts the rape and its harrowing physical and psychological fallouts as well as the undermining effects on her adult life as she struggled to connect emotionally and romantically with men. Though Fryar attacked another girl later that same year, his DNA only entered the criminal justice network after a drug arrest in 2002. After constant prodding, cold case rape kit DNA was reintroduced into the system, and matches were found to provide sufficient evidence to prosecute Fryar in 2013, but Winslow's case remained unattributed to him. Her adult life as a married mother of two and an American expatriate living in "polite and formal and circumspect" Cambridge, England, was refocused on obsessively investigating Fryar herself and unearthing enough sound, actionable ties linking him to her assault. Winslow doggedly uncovered more about her rapist and prepared for a media-hyped trial with the aid of persistent investigators. Despite legal red tape--including Pennsylvania's statute of limitation laws, which can only be overturned with DNA evidence--Fryar emerged as the smug prime suspect. Urgently written with forthright prose, the memoir's serpentine suspense elements resemble the plot points seen in the kind of crime fiction the author writes herself. She doesn't skimp on the intimate details of the intimidating court case or the mettle necessary to endure what proved to be a winding, mentally challenging, and ultimately disappointing journey toward retribution. A potently rendered chronicle of rape and the clarity and closure achieved even when justice is only partially served.

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Starred review from May 1, 2016

In 1992, novelist Winslow (The Whole World) was a theater major at Carnegie Mellon University in Pennsylvania, when she was raped in her apartment by an unknown assailant. The cold case opened again in 2013, when DNA evidence unexpectedly pointed to serial rapist Arthur Fryar, and a loophole in the statute of limitations allowed him to be prosecuted. Winslow, designated "Jane Doe January" in the court records, begins a diary of her thoughts about the assault, its aftermath, and the preparation for the trial that follows. An active participant in the prosecution taking place across the Atlantic (she lives in England), the author researches the suspect, contacts people involved in the original investigation, and maintains constant correspondence with the prosecutors. It is a long journey of starts and stops, delays, disappointments, and loss. Mostly, it is full of kind, helpful people whose refusal to give up heartens Winslow through the frustrating process. This important chronicle answers the question, does it serve justice to put a man on trial for a 20-year-old crime? For the victim, it absolutely does. VERDICT This eloquent memoir will be appreciated by anyone interested in cold case investigations and victim advocacy as well as true crime fans. [See Prepub Alert, 11/23/15.]--Deirdre Bray Root, MidPointe Lib. Syst., OH

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