The Woman in the Library and Trailed: One Woman's Quest to Solve the Shenandoah Murders

 

     I thoroughly enjoyed both my 5th and 6th books from my 20 Books of Summer List. The Woman in the Library by Sulari Gentill, an Australian mystery novelist, is set in Boston (and Cambridge), particularly in Back Bay, a beautiful part of the city known for its Victorian brick and brownstone townhouses with a few mansions thrown in for good measure. Back Bay has always been an upscale neighborhood. It’s close to the Boston Public Library, a gorgeous building, and it’s there that the first scenes of the book take place. Four supposed strangers meet in the venerable Reading Room of the research library, and become quickly connected after they hear a woman’s piercing scream outside the Reading Room. One of the four is Winifred (Freddie), an Australian novelist who is lucky enough to travel to Boston via a fellowship that allows her to reside in a beautiful building in Back Bay. This story is a mystery within a mystery. The relationships among the four “sleuths” are lively and fun to watch unfold. I recommend it. 

     Some of you may know Sulari Gentill as the author of the Rowland Sinclair series of mysteries set in 1930s-early 1940s Australia. I don’t know if they are published here or not.

     My 6^th read was a new book of true crime, Trailed: One Woman’s Quest to Solve the Shenandoah Murders by the journalist Kathryn Miles. In 1996, two highly skilled wilderness hikers, both young women, were brutally murdered in the Shenandoah National Park (two hour’s drive west of Washington, D.C.) The case has never been definitively solved. Miles’s research found that the majority of reported murder and rape victims in national wilderness areas are female, despite the fact that women are a minority of backcountry travelers.

     Miles makes an undeniably plausible case that the man believed to have committed the murder of these two women is innocent of the crime, and posits another man, a serial killer, who was never connected to this case. The backstory of the two women’s lives was fascinating. I was also very interested to learn more about how the science of forensics has changed over the past 26 years and how it has not. The story of the FBI’s mis-handling of the case was well portrayed and infuriating, but Miles does make a strong case that federal, state, and National Park Service forces are seriously under-funded and under-staffed, and also suffer from woefully insufficient training. I was quite awed by much that she brought to light and the research and writing was excellent. I think much of my interest in this book stems from my keen interest in wilderness areas.