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lcarslibrarian's review
3.0
Not your typical true crime book in that it's about police corruption, drugs, and disenfranchisement of the poor more than one horrible killer. It was both remarkable and expected that the police in this small town were (allegedly) involved in drugs and the murder of sex workers.
alysonfox's review
4.0
I liked this book, it was interesting because I had never heard of the Jeff Davis 8 before seeing this book in the true crime section at my library. I appreciate Ethan Brown’s commitment to hunting for the truth for these victims and their families.
As with most nonfiction, there were quite a few key players in this book and it was hard for me to keep track after awhile, although there is a timeline and a chart with each of the victims’ names and cause of death in the back of the book. But I got the main gist - the cases are unsolved and there are many reasons to believe that these women were all murdered as a result of the corrupt law enforcement of the parish.
It felt timely to finish this book just days after yet another mass shooting, in which the law enforcement also failed to act. Their inability to do their job will hopefully be investigated as the dept in Jennings has been.
I am definitely going to watch the documentary that Ethan Brown put out.
As with most nonfiction, there were quite a few key players in this book and it was hard for me to keep track after awhile, although there is a timeline and a chart with each of the victims’ names and cause of death in the back of the book. But I got the main gist - the cases are unsolved and there are many reasons to believe that these women were all murdered as a result of the corrupt law enforcement of the parish.
It felt timely to finish this book just days after yet another mass shooting, in which the law enforcement also failed to act. Their inability to do their job will hopefully be investigated as the dept in Jennings has been.
I am definitely going to watch the documentary that Ethan Brown put out.
sunrae_booknook's review
5.0
Very well written, almost in the style of midnight in the garden of good and evil. I hope it helps to shed continued light on the unsolved cases
provenance's review
3.0
I don't particularly enjoy how Ethan Brown tends to interject himself in his writings. And there was a bit too much conjecture in this but I found the discussion of small town Louisiana politics and crime fascinating.
jrpal's review
3.0
While it’s clear a lot of time and research had gone into this book, I think Murder in the Bayou fell right into dated true crime tropes. The victims were not described more than being just victims—troubled, addicts, mentally ill. There was very little effort to humanize them or show a more complete portrait of the human toll of police corruption. Disappointing all around.
jakewritesbooks's review
4.0
The Jeff Davis 8 murders were apparently one of the inspirations for Nic Pizzolatto's first season of True Detective. Like many properties Pizzolatto engages with, I can't help but feeling like he came away with all of the wrong lessons. Ethan Brown is a competent writer and, most importantly, he respects the humanity of the female victims here. There are no titillating descriptions of their bodies, no glamorizing the sad sex-and-drugs trade, no appeals to some sort of Cajun Illuminati. Just an autopsy of the circumstances of these women's deaths and the likely perpetrators of them (probably law enforcement and people connected to them), set in the misery of Jefferson Parish, an underfunded, underserved swamp of humidity and humane-less behavior. Brown covers this the way one would cover a longform piece, leaving questions open-ended as they should be and keeping the focus on those who died. One of the better true crime novels to deal with such a subject.
amylee218's review against another edition
3.0
I won this book in a giveaway. The story in this book was an important one to tell. That level of corruption needs to be brought into the light. That being said, it took me a while to get through the book because I had to keep flipping back to the chart of who was who. The author was very thorough and provided a lot of background information, but the book seemed to be mainly about police corruption and a comparatively small amount of time was spent letting the reader get to know the girls that made up the Jeff Davis 8.