When my book group discussed my book — of course I made my book group read my book — one of our members said, "Your book seems like a new genre- memoir, mystery, criminal reportage. And I loved that."
In fact, there are other books in this genre. These are the ones I've read; I put stars by the ones I like the best:
*Lost Girls: Unsolved American Mystery, Robert Kolker, 2013. New York magazine contributing editor/New York Times investigative reporter appears as a character in his own book, telling the story of female sex workers whose bodies were found at Gilgo Beach, Long Island, NY.( Note: Since Kolker wrote Lost Girls, someone has been charged with most of the murders: Do a Web search for Rex Heuermann.)
The Fact of a Body: A Murder and a Memoir, Alexandra Marsano-Lesnevich, 2017, Former Harvard Law School intern for a defense firm that works to get convicts off death row interweaves the stories of her own sexual abuse as a young child and of a man who confessed to the sexually motivated murder of a young child.
*I'll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer, Michelle McNamara, February 2018. An author with a Master of Fine Arts degree in fiction writing who was a consultant for Dateline/NBC and had her own true-crime Website appears as a character in her book, telling the story she summarized in the book's title. (Note: McNamara died before she finished her book, which was published two years later after her husband, the comedian Patton Oswalt; crime writer Paul Haynes and investigative journalist Bill Jensen completed it. Two months after the book's publication, a former California police officer, Joseph James DeAngelo, was arrested and charged with six counts of First- Degree Murder for crimes previously attributed to the "Golden State Killer." Per police, the timing of the book's publication and DeAngelo's arrest was coincidental.)
*Know My Name: A Memoir, Chanel Miller, 2019. The survivor of a college rape tells her own story, including her experience with the criminal justice system.
The Third Rainbow Girl: The Long Life of a Double Murder in Appalachia, Emma Copley Eisenberg, 2019. A writer appears as a character in her book, telling the story of murders in 1980 in a West Virginia county in which she later lived and their long-term impact on the community.
*Tell Me Everything: The Story of a Private Investigation, Erika Krouse, 2022. A new-to-the-trade private investigator appears as a character in her book, telling the story of sexual assaults committed by college football players as part of a university's recruiting culture.