‘My story starts with a body, just not the one you might expect.’
When Janeway Sharp loses her father suddenly, she also loses her grip on day-to-day life. While seeking answers, trying to understand her father’s choices, Jane discovers an online true crime solving community and begins to make new friendships that will ultimately lead her to try to solve a shocking massacre…
What’s it about?
Grief. Loss. Belonging. Community. Oh, and solving a bunch of murders. When Jane becomes Searcher24, she doesn’t just find a distraction from the painful loss of her father, but a whole surrogate family: SleuthMistress, the mother, GeorgeLightley, the father, and two wayward brothers, LordGoku and CitizenNight. Like all families, they have their secrets, and secrets have a habit of coming to the surface when you dig hard enough…
What’s it like?
Propulsive. Thrilling. Ultimately both a cracking read (as a work of contemporary crime fiction) and a deeply unsettling book (insofar as Winstead has taken too much ‘inspiration’ from a specific set of very recent real life murders).
Short chapters are effectively juxtaposed to create a strong onward drive and the interactions between the internet sleuths are both convincing and telling. Dear Janeway, when someone shows you who they are, believe them!
Jane’s first person narration effectively references past, present and future events as we move inexorably towards the point referenced in the opening chapter and witness the increasingly duplicitous methods employed by our group of sleuths to reach the coveted truth. The final chapter is chilling, confirming the lengths to which our intrepid narrator will go to achieve her ends and opening a wealth of moral questions.
Winstead explores a thoroughly murky world where true crime is being turned into entertainment and the human costs are high as amateurs take on detectives and break the law themselves in their determination to win. The other key thread in this gripping book is loss, the devastating impact of which is beautifully captured in Jane’s unmooring, and helps to create a much needed sympathy for this internet sleuth, who fictional readers may have seen, ‘getting shoved to my knees in the dirt, hands wrested behind my back, gun-toting FBI agents swarming like ants around me into that three-storey house.’
Final thoughts
I really, thoroughly enjoyed reading ‘This Book Will Bury Me’ – and then I learned that the author was being criticised online for using a real life murder scene and recycling key details as plot, before the real life killer had even gone to trial, raising questions about the ethics of profiting from a horrific crime in which the bodies had barely been buried. For me, this revelation has retrospectively soured the experience of reading this book.
‘There is no line…crime is interactive these days.’
I was lucky to be gifted a free copy of this book at the last ever Crimefest in May 2025 and recently read it as part of a Crimefest themed read-along with a friend. I understand that the final version now incorporates a note from the author at the beginning, noting the links to the real life tragedy, and that the author has explained, either there or elsewhere, that in some respects, Janeway’s experience of losing a parent and seeking solutions from online crime solving forums about this particular case echo Winstead’s own. Regardless, I find it odd that she didn’t make more changes between the original crimes and her story, or at the very least change the location, to avoid directly profiting from real life crime.
Ignoring my sensitivity to this apparent insensitivity, I really did love reading this. While certain outcomes are perhaps a little predictable / enjoyably guessable, the writing is still highly engaging, and other outcomes definitely aren’t predictable!
Recommended with caveats above.
