A review by jayneyh314
We Keep the Dead Close: A Murder at Harvard and a Half Century of Silence by Becky Cooper

dark emotional informative mysterious slow-paced

4.5

In 1969, Harvard graduate student, Jane Britton, was found brutally murdered in her apartment after missing an important exam. There were rumours of an affair with a married Professor but nobody was ever charged, never mind convicted, for her murder. 40 years later when Becky Cooper also attends Harvard the rumours are still circulating and the Professor at the heart of them is still working at Harvard. Cooper was scandalised at the idea that this man could be guilty and hiding behind the power of Harvard. She was drawn to Jane’s story and decided to start digging into it with a view to being the person who might finally solve this decades long mystery.  

I had seen this recommended by @jobis89 over on instagram and her true crime recommendations are always on point so I downloaded it back in 2021 and then it has sat on my Kindle patiently waiting for me, until now! 

It’s quite a slow read, there are lots of details and Cooper switches back and forth between her investigation in the present day and what was going on back in the 1960s. She gives a fair bit of background into how the American college system works, especially at an Ivy League college such as Harvard, which is useful to help get your head around how this kind of thing could have happened. 

Cooper’s writing is very detailed and it’s not hard to see that she is an academic at heart. Sources are meticulously referenced and she follows up each lead to make sure the information is correct. It’s clear that she starts to identify quite closely with Jane and is very driven to uncover the truth about what happened to her. 

Cooper also highlights the difficulties that women in academia faced, particularly back in 1969 but even still as she was writing. 

There are a lot of twists in the story and at times I had to remind myself it was true crime rather than crime fiction as the twists felt like they could have been a work of fiction. 

I don’t want to spoil anything so it’s hard to really say more. I really enjoyed it overall.