Rachel Monroe

A “necessary and brilliant” (NPR) exploration of our cultural fascination with true crime told through four “enthralling” (The New York Times Book Review) narratives of obsession. In Savage Appetites, Rachel Monroe links four criminal roles—Detective, Victim, Defender, and Killer—to four true stories about women driven by obsession. From a frustrated and brilliant heiress crafting crime-scene dollhouses to a young woman who became part of a Manson victim’s family, from a landscape architect in love with a convicted murderer to a Columbine fangirl who planned her own mass shooting, these women are alternately mesmerizing, horrifying, and sympathetic. A revealing study of women’s complicated relationship with true crime and the fear and desire it can inspire, together these stories provide a window into why many women are drawn to crime narratives—even as they also recoil from them. Monroe uses these four cases to trace the history of American crime through the growth of forensic science, the evolving role of victims, the Satanic Panic, the rise of online detectives, and the long shadow of the Columbine shooting. Combining personal narrative, reportage, and a sociological examination of violence and media in the 20th and 21st centuries, Savage Appetites is a “corrective to the genre it interrogates” (The New Statesman), scrupulously exploring empathy, justice, and the persistent appeal of crime.

True Stories of Women, Crime, and Obsession

Savage Appetites

A provocative and original investigation of our cultural fascination with crime, linking four archetypes—Detective, Victim, Defender, Killer—to four true stories about women driven by obsession. In this illuminating exploration of women, violence, and obsession, Rachel Monroe interrogates the appeal of true crime through four narratives of fixation. In the 1940s, a frustrated heiress began creating dollhouse crime scenes depicting murders, suicides, and accidental deaths. Known as the “Mother of Forensic Science,” she revolutionized the field of what was then called legal medicine. In the aftermath of the Manson Family murders, a young woman moved into Sharon Tate’s guesthouse and, over the next two decades, entwined herself with the Tate family. In the mid-nineties, a landscape architect in Brooklyn fell in love with a convicted murderer, the supposed ringleader of the West Memphis Three, through an intense series of letters. After they married, she devoted her life to getting him freed from death row. And in 2015, a teenager deeply involved in the online fandom for the Columbine killers planned a mass shooting of her own. Each woman, Monroe argues, represents and identifies with a particular archetype that provides an entryway into true crime. Through these four cases, she traces the history of American crime through the growth of forensic science, the evolving role of victims, the Satanic Panic, the rise of online detectives, and the long shadow of the Columbine shooting. In a combination of personal narrative, reportage, and a sociological examination of violence and media in the twentieth and twenty-first century, Savage Appetites scrupulously explores empathy, justice, and the persistent appeal of violence.

Four True Stories of Women, Crime, and Obsession

bellamy-hill

Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring.

"Counsel, what harm is there in allowing him to present evidence from the last seventeen years?" one of the judges asked. 

The prosecutor look startled. "Well, the harm is the finality of a criminal judgement. The harm is--is to the criminal justice system's interest in /finality/."

If the detective knew everything and the victim felt everything, the defender was the one who fixed everything.

I had never before thought about the terrible privacy of murder--how something so awful could be done to you and the only person who would ever know what happened was the person who did it. [...] How they got to own the story. How it was an evil kind of intimacy. 

Doris sits quietly, her back straight; she must have realized that she wasn't there as an interviewee, but as a player in some perverse psychodrama concocted by Nelson. He goes on and on, talking about Sharon's innocence, talking about how it was violated. He described Susan Atkins saying that seeing Sharon's blood spurting out felt like a sexual release. He finally looks up at Doris, "That's your daughter."

I like to imagine her authority in that room, with all those detectives listening intently to her words. [...] Perhaps she finally felt satisfied as the burly men bent over her small models, the care she put into them rewarded with the care of their gaze. 

I thought about how the detective's gaze--slow, hungry, attentive--is not so different from a caress.

What captivated me reading Rachel's book was the intrinsic sense of intimacy between all the archetypes, and how each archetype still staked claim in some form. 

The detective stake their claim in ownership, the defender in defiance, the killer in infamy, and the victim in proximity. She also discusses how this intimacy -- which she notes in the victim archetype -- is evil. Some true crime enthusiasts, who takes moral high-ground in making it about the victims, still becomes a mouthpiece that they may have no place being. How true crime, in unpacking it in this way, becomes romantic - and therefore objectifying of it's subjects. 

I can understand the critiques that, as an enjoyer of true crime herself, Rachel should have unpacked her enjoyment of these things a little more. But I think the ending does a good job of communicating her disillusionment with the genre, and I think all case studies she references help re-enforce her ending at Crime-Con. The last two parts (defender and killer) are the books strongest, and I felt the detective was a weak start, but I understand that it probably would not have flowed well if moved from the beginning of the book. It just doesn't have as much to say about true crime bingers as much as the other parts.

Rachel writes in a easy and captivating style that I did have fun reading however. But there was just something I was missing, perhaps that's the fun of the mystery. 

What captivated me reading Rachel's book was the intrinsic sense of intimacy between all the archetypes, and how each archetype still staked claim in some form. 

The detective stake their claim in ownership, the defender in defiance, the killer in infamy, and the victim in proximity. She also discusses how this intimacy -- which she notes in the victim archetype -- is evil. Some true crime enthusiasts, who takes moral high-ground in making it about the victims, still becomes a mouthpiece that they may have no place being. How true crime, in unpacking it in this way, becomes romantic - and therefore objectifying of it's subjects. 

I can understand the critiques that, as an enjoyer of true crime herself, Rachel should have unpacked her enjoyment of these things a little more. But I think the ending does a good job of communicating her disillusionment with the genre, and I think all case studies she references help re-enforce her ending at Crime-Con. The last two parts (defender and killer) are the books strongest, and I felt the detective was a weak start, but I understand that it probably would not have flowed well if moved from the beginning of the book. It just doesn't have as much to say about true crime bingers as much as the other parts.

Rachel writes in a easy and captivating style that I did have fun reading however. But there was just something I was missing, perhaps that's the fun of the mystery. 

Lindy

In this book, Rachel Monroe sets out to examine the dissonance between women's consumption of true crime media and socially appropriate responses to tragedy. I wish I'd started taking notes on Monroe's use of thought-terminating clichés at the outset, because boy there are a lot of them, and because of this she is unable to investigate or resolve the dissonance. Yeah, it doing so would be really uncomfortable. That's the point. And thus the book is rendered pointless; it alternates between turgid and overly emotive retellings of crime stories and shifts into the category of media it's attempting to analyze.

Lauren Attaway

Savage Appetites is the perfect read for true-crime fans who want to explore women's role in the past and current true crime fixation. 

In the past few years, true crime has become big business. Savage Appetites dives into the why and how women are so obsessed with crime without giving cheap answers. It makes you think, and this book should be required reading or listening for true crime consumers and distributers. We really need to study who we allow to be a victim/obsession, and 2020 is the perfect year for that.

Savage Appetites True Stories of Women, Crime, and Obsession

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