I found this book on NetGalley, and even though I read more manga than graphic novels, I requested it because of its subject matter. I’m fascinated by True Crime, and the fact that it was subtitled as a “memoir of a true-crime obsession” made me think it would be a cross between Gone at Midnight (in that the author’s journey is important) and Savage Appetites (exploring why women, in particular, are so drawn to the genre).

Unfortunately, I think Murder Book fell short of one of these expectations. It was an intensely personal book, exploring why she and her family all seemed to be into True Crime, but attempts to explore the bigger issues in the genre seemed to be a little lacking. For example, podcasts like Serial and My Favourite Murder were brought up, but the toxic culture/allegations of toxicity found in some podcasts and other problematic aspects (ahem, the host of Sword and Scale) were completely glossed over. For example, is it okay to use 911 calls in the podcast? Are jokey catchphrases fun or disrespectful to victims? Can we use podcasts as advocacy channels or are they meant to be as balanced as possible? I was hoping for some discussion of these questions because they are questions that I have, but they didn’t appear, although there was a segment on racism in the true-crime industry which led to “women make true crime better”, which is not the conclusion I was going for.

That said, in exploring her family’s personal history with murder, Hilary does talk about anxiety about one’s safety and empathy as one reason why women are fascinated with murder, and I thought that section was interesting and the closest we got to exploring the appeal of the genre. Her other reasons, like wanting to live in the 70s/80s or having very casual parents, felt a bit too specific/American and I couldn’t really relate with those.

Another thing I liked were the recaps of the cases. I already knew a few, like the Ted Bundy one because I’ve read Ann Rule’s book, but I have never heard of Tom Capano and I thought that the case was fascinating (Wikipedia link if anyone wants to look at it).

Overall, I enjoyed this but it was not the book for me. Thinking about it, the reason why I was not as engaged with the book as I wanted was that I didn’t know why I should be interested in Hilary’s story. Is she meant to be a typical (American) fan? Was she trying to explore meta-issues about the genre? I don’t know. Add a rather rambly and meandering narrative style to this and I wasn’t particularly interested in the book – the next book on my TBR was probably a bigger motivator to me finishing this! But I did enjoy some of the recaps, so it wasn’t a complete washout for me.

P.s. Friends who are familiar with graphic novels – is it common to have the author draw herself on the toilet a lot? I think I saw a toilet scene at least five times and it didn’t really feel like a motif/that it had any deeper symbolism (like the Psycho shower scene or something, it was just her sitting on the toilet), so I’m not sure if it’s a common thing?

Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley, but all opinions are my own.