Rachel Monroe has been "murder minded" since childhood, part of an overwhelmingly female demographic that consumes true-crime books, podcasts and television shows. It's an obsession that makes her a little uncomfortable. Monroe's first book, Savage Appetites: Four True Stories of Women, Crime, and Obsession, explores these interests through four case studies: detective, victim, defender and killer.
Frances Glessner Lee became an expert on early forensic studies and built the Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death, miniature houses (fully functional, furnished and wired) portraying crime scenes. Twenty-one years after the Tate murders, Alisa Statman moved into the garage apartment at the former Tate-Polanski residence. She avidly studied the case and befriended Patti, Sharon Tate's youngest sister. The West Memphis Three were teenaged boys wrongfully convicted of murder because they were social outcasts. Their story, and one of them in particular, caught the attention of Lorri Davis, who moved cross-country and devoted her life to freeing him from death row; they are now married. And as an awkward teenager, Lindsay Souvannarath nursed a growing interest in mass murder. At 22, she met her match in a young man with a plan.
These case studies, exploring the archetypes that structure our thinking about crime, are intercut with stories of Monroe's own life, her own guilty obsessions and research. Monroe attends CrimeCon and Souvannarath's sentencing hearing, giving herself nightmares, and ultimately mines her personal experience of true-crime obsession to question the appeal of violent crime. Savage Appetites is a chilling, compelling examination of the darkness in us all. This is obviously a book for true-crime fans, as well as anyone interested in human nature. --Julia Kastner, librarian and blogger at pagesofjulia