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 … 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.
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I have been a true crime fan for years, but this is not your average true crime novel. It inspired me to think very deeply about aspects of violent crime that I hadn’t considered previously.
The book is divided in lot 4 sections: The Detective, The Victim, The Defender, and The Killer. The whole is so much more than that. It offers insight into women’s thoughts, feelings, reactions, and actions regarding violent crime. What about true crime fascinates us? What is it to be a victim and how has that perception changed us as individuals and as a society? How have laws, crime detection, sentencing changed? What elements of our society are impacted by violent crime daily? Why, when violent crime is so dominated by males (as perpetrators, victims, and investigators), are so many women drawn to these stories?
Well written, thought provoking, gruesome and more than a little disturbing, but If you are fascinated by true crime, I definitely recommend this book.
I won this book in a Goodreads giveaway.
This is like high junk reading, both getting the information, snickering at the misinformation, stalking the stalkers and really brooding on the possibility that the dead female body at the top of the film is feeding a female appetite for death and malfeasance and not yawn more jerk off fodder for men. Our corpses, ourselves!
Savage Appetites, Rachel Monroe’s study on ‘women, crime, and obsession,’ can properly be described as brilliant. It informs, entertains, and leaves readers with new cultural perspectives that are long overdue. I’m now a Rachel Monroe fan and after you read this book, you will be too.
No one writes about crime like Rachel Monroe, who brings to her subject a profound emotional acuity, a piercing grasp of fixation and frailty, and a precise sort of beauty that never glamorizes but always illuminates. In Savage Appetites, she shows crime obsession to be an equally idiosyncratic, irresistible subject — full of treachery and full of thrills.
I actually found this book rather dry and boring. I gave up about 15 pages into it b/c there wasn’t even one part that even slightly caught my interest.
I have always loved true crime stuff, even as a child. (Yes, I was *that* kid.) Full disclosure here–I’m listening to this on audio, and I’m not finished with it yet. However, I’m really enjoying it. Instead of focusing on the crimes themselves, this book focuses on four different women who became fascinated/obsessed with crime. It’s really interesting and fascinating and I highly recommend it to those that are also interested in true crime. (For those into audio books, I like the narrator a lot, but I know that’s a very subjective thing.)
A deeply intelligent, intensely gripping work of metacrime. Rachel Monroe is a brilliant new journalist with a sparkly goth heart.
In Savage Appetites, Rachel Monroe brings a rigorous and illuminating gaze to some of our most disturbing fascinations. Ultimately, she summons generosity and nuance for the discussion of hungers we might be tempted to dismiss entirely, asking revealing questions that are ultimately questions about the nature of desire itself: for intimacy, for freedom, for a sense of meaning. I read this book in a single day, but I know I’ll be thinking about it for years to come — especially its keen appreciation for the mystery of what drives us through this world.
Rachel Monroe has long been one of my favorite writers at the intersection of crime and culture, and her first book, Savage Appetites, is the grand culmination of her reporting. It’s a standout, formally inventive, and refreshing examination of the way we consume true crime, and the way it consumes us.
Savage Appetites is a marvel of original reportage and cultural criticism, and could not be more timely. Like a first responder to a crime scene, Rachel Monroe methodically investigates every inch of America’s obsession with murder stories, unearthing more than a few discoveries, and showing that what makes us tick now has been there all along.
A brilliant book, laced with a perspective that’s long been missing from the world of true crime. Rachel Monroe holds up a mirror to our fascination with illicit tales — and her own — all while deftly unspooling four unforgettable stories from the other side. Savage Appetites is wholly unique and utterly riveting.
I don’t know how Rachel Monroe wrote a book so vivid and perceptive, but I couldn’t put it down. Savage Appetites is an original: at once a thoughtful, beautifully written treatise on why women are drawn to crime stories and a gripping read to satisfy any murder obsessive. I’m not exaggerating when I say Monroe has written a new true crime classic, one that both adds to and challenges the genre.