An Unexplained Death is an obsessive investigation into a mysterious death at the Belvedere–a once-grand hotel–and a poignant, gripping meditation on suicide and voyeurism “The poster is new. I notice it right away, taped to a utility pole. Beneath the word ‘Missing,’ printed in a bold, high-impact font, are two sepia-toned photographs of a man dressed in a bow tie and tux.” Most people would … tux.”
Most people would keep walking. Maybe they’d pay a bit closer attention to the local news that evening. Mikita Brottman spent ten years sifting through the details of the missing man’s life and disappearance, and his purported suicide by jumping from the roof of her own apartment building, the Belvedere.
As Brottman delves into the murky circumstances surrounding Rey Rivera’s death–which begins to look more and more like a murder–she contemplates the nature of and motives behind suicide, and uncovers a haunting pattern of guests at the Belvedere, when it was still a historic hotel, taking their own lives on the premises. Finally, she fearlessly takes us to the edge of her own morbid curiosity and asks us to consider our own darker impulses and obsessions.
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An Unexplained Death begins as a factual mystery, then opens up into something far greater: the fundamental mysteries that concern us all. Mikita Brottman is a gripping writer and an intrepid explorer, a brave chronicler of her obsessions, and ours.
An Unexplained Death: The True Story of a Body at the Belvedere by Mikita Brottman is really more than just the story of Rey Rivera, it is also a bit of a history on the Belvedere Hotel in Baltimore, Maryland plus other random things the author decided to talk about. I haven’t read too much true crime and I was really excited for this one, especially knowing Brottman actually lived in the hotel (at least that is what I gathered from the book). I thought she was an investigative journalist for some reason but when I looked her up it seems she is actually a psychologist with an interest in true crime. Which makes no difference to me, but I don’t really know what happened with this book of hers.
I really liked the parts about the history of the hotel and other strange happenings there, but I didn’t think there was enough attention to them or Rivera in the book. Brottman went off on a lot of unrelated tangents and I thought her writing was very choppy. I decided to listen to the audiobook, and I really liked her voice but found her narration to be choppy as well. So as much as it pains me to say this, I think I would go with reading the book and not the audio, but it wasn’t awful so if you want to listen to it I’m sure you’d be fine.
Overall, I was a little disappointed in An Unexplained Death and wanted a lot more about Rivera and the hotel, and less about Brottman’s life and other unrelated things she writes about. However, if you want to learn just an overview of the case and the Belvedere I would still recommend checking it out. It wasn’t a bad book by any means, just not what I was hoping for.
Thank you to the publisher for my advance review copy via NetGalley. All opinions and thoughts are my own.
Mikita Brottman’s An Unexplained Death is not just a thrilling whodunit, with new clues unfolding every chapter, it’s a beautifully written elegy about the mystery of death. By the end of the book, you’ll be just as fascinated by Brottman as you will be by her main character: the handsome and devoted Rey Rivera, who suddenly goes missing early on a Baltimore spring evening. This is one riveting, heartbreaking read.
At once a meditation on suicide and the ways people die as well as a solid piece of investigative reporting, An Unexplained Death crosses many lines and takes big risks. Admirable. Compelling. Unusual.
Mesmerizing. A haunting meditation on the opacity of facts―how the who, what, when, and where always fail to plumb the abyss: the why. Brottman’s inquiry into the death of Rey Rivera turns into an 11-year hunt for revelation along the knife-edge of pathology.
An intriguing story of a woman’s decade-long morbid obsession with suicide and the mysterious death of the 32-year-old stranger who died after crashing through the roof of her home, Baltimore’s historic Belvedere Hotel.
This is a learned, lucid, and finally heartbreaking account of urban obsession. It’s David Fincher’s film Zodiac crossed with accounts of Judge Crater’s disappearance crossed with Ms. Brottman’s wild take on the unknowability of life and the necessity of staying obsessed. Ms. Brottman is a groove―and so is her book.
Thank to NetGalley and the publisher for an advance copy of this book in return for an honest review.
And honestly, I always feel so bad when I rate a book so low, but don’t think I could do any more than 1 star, just for the author’s effort.
From the title and the description, I expected this to be an in-depth look at the unexplained death of Rey Rivera. It started in that fashion, and then derailed completely. We begin with a brief introduction to Rey Rivera and the Belvedere, where the author lives and where Rey Rivera died. The author then leads us down the path of her psychoanalysis for insecurity as she feels she is invisible. I’m guessing it ties in as we are all invisible until something happens? Next, the author goes into quite a lot of detail about suicide with macabre ramblings that don’t connect to the story. We then move a bit deeper into Rey’s story, but there are so many open topics (suicide, accident, murder, the Masons, his business associates) that the author brings up, then just lets them sit while she moves to taking about walking her dog in a park, rabid bats and poisoned rats. And more suicides thrown in for good measure. I couldn’t follow her connections, the story about Rey was totally unsatisfying, and the book is just the author’s morbid curiosity about anything and everything put down on paper.