If You Liked the Serial Podcast, this Book’s for You
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My favorite part of this book is the construct the author opens with and repeats with some regularity throughout. It is her way of telling us that the story we are about to hear – about violence against women – happens so often that we cannot quite pay attention when the next case comes to light. Here are the opening lines of this book:
“You’ve heard of her,” I say – a challenge, an assurance…Sometimes they know her right away. Sometimes they ask, “Wasn’t that the one where the guy kept her in the basement?”
No! No. It was not.
Wasn’t it the one where she was stabbed in – no. The one where she got in a cab with – different girl. The one where she went to the frat party, the one where he used a stick, the one where he used a hammer, the one where she picked him up from rehab and he – no. The one where he’d been watching her jog every day? The one where she made the mistake of telling him her period was late? The one with the uncle? Wait, the other one with the uncle?”
As it turns out, none of these are the case that the narrator, Bodie Kane, is thinking about. Instead, she is thinking about Granby, a boarding school in New Hampshire, where high school senior, Thalia Keith, died in a swimming pool right after leaving the stage in the school’s production of Camelot. The year was 1995.
The case is quickly solved when Omar Evans, the school’s athletic trainer – and only Black person on campus – is coerced into a confession. In spite of his conviction, the case was never forgotten because people thought the authorities did a poor job investigating it. They also thought Evans’ defense was weak. Thus, there was a 2005 Dateline Special with Lester Holt, and in 2018, the year in which the novel takes place, an internet debate is raging.
As it turns out, Bodie Kane was roommates with Thalia for a time during their years at Granby. After graduating, Bodie moved to Los Angeles where she became a professor of film studies at UCLA. She also hosted an acclaimed podcast, Scarlet Fever, a serial history of women in film. In it, she showed the ways the industry chewed women up and spat them out. Thus, when Granby invites her back in 2018 to teach two two-week courses – one on podcasting and another on film studies – she is well qualified to teach both.
Surely all of the “kids” who lived through the tragedy in 1995 thought about it through the years. This was certainly the case with Bodie. In particular, she focused on the teacher who helped to produce Camelot, Denny Bloch. Looking back through the eyes of an adult – and in the aftermath of the #MeToo movement – she suspects he might have played a role in the murder. But what can she do about it all these years later?
The perfect answer comes when one of her students in the class on podcasting decides to look into Thalia’s death. Well, actually, Bodie steers her in that direction. And then, off we go in murder mystery fashion to figure out “who done it.” The story has twists and turns and is very compelling.
Anyone who has followed the “Serial” podcast about the 1999 death of Hae Min Lee and the boyfriend – Adnan Syed – who was found guilty of her murder, will enjoy this book.
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