A review by jakewritesbooks
Murder in the Bayou: Who Killed the Women Known as the Jeff Davis 8? by Ethan Brown

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.