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This was one of the most throughly researched and well-written true crime books I have ever read. And I read a lot of true crime.

We Keep the Dead Close was about misogyny as much as it is about a murder. A murder that, until very recently was unsolved for over two decades! Becky Cooper does an excellent job bringing Jane to life and making her a well rounded real person and not just a murder victim. Her dedication to the case had me worried at parts and although I disliked the end, sometimes that's how it is in life.

I'd definitely recommend this for readers of true crime and those looking to dip their toes into the genre, but not want anything morbid or "too murdery." For fans of The Secret History and academic type novels as well!

I'm going to review this book by saying a few things about how I normally do reviews.

First and foremost, I normally take a ton of notes while I'm reading a book. I highlight every single line that catches my eye or catches my breath. Here, I noted almost nothing.

Second, and more notable still, I normally give myself one day to mull over what I thought of a book. Quite literally, I sleep on. Here, I had to give it more than a week. I really had to think about it. Hell, I had to read <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/49337373-the-third-rainbow-girl">another book with many similar themes</a> - true crime, feminism, racism, coming to a place from the outside and become part of it - to fully digest my feelings.

And I'm still not sure what to say.

On its face, <i>We Keep the Dead Close</i> is a story about a young woman murdered at an Ivy League school and all the ways her death was dismissed, disregarded, swept under the rug. It's about the suspects and the people who knew her best.

But what this book is really about is the misogyny inherent in academia, about the persistent othering of women and femmes who try to make a mark in a world that has too long been male. It's about the darkness that surrounds any unsolved crime. And it's about the fact that we never can really know another person.

<i>We Keep the Dead Close</i> is a haunting text, told in turns bluntly and tenderly, that explores the intricacies of what it is to try and walk in another person's shoes, a task made all the more harrowing when that person's life is cut short. So much more is uncovered here than evidence, suspects, timelines. Much like the unearthing of an ancient city, here revealed by layers is the story of a life.

I didn't make too many notes. But I noted this:

"Perhaps Jane's story was a morality tale in more ways than I had realized. Not only did it serve as a narrative check on someone with power, [...] it was also a way of cautioning against promiscuous, assertive behavior from someone in Jane's position: a female graduate student. Assigning guilt to the victim helped distance us from what happened to her; it wouldn't happen to us, as long as we stayed in check. But in so doing, we had unconsciously been perpetuating a story whose moral derived from the very patriarchal system we thought we were surmounting by telling the story in the first place.

"I'm sorry."

Straight off, I’ll just admit my guilty pleasure is true crime. I’ve read a lot of less-than-wonderful true crime over the years, and some extremely good stuff (Columbine, Bad Blood, Catch & Kill, and I’ll Be Gone In The Dark come instantly to mind). I had read about Becky Cooper’s We Keep The Dead Close, subtitled “A Murder at Harvard and a Half Century of Silence,” and was happy to receive a copy from Grand Central Publishing and NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. It definitely falls into the “good stuff” category, and it’s an incredible double story of an unsolved murder from the ‘60s and a woman’s obsession to find the truth about that murder.

In 1969, a 23-year-old graduate student named Jane Britton was found murdered in her apartment just off the Harvard campus. She was an ambitious and independent student in the Archaeology Department at Harvard, and lived her life on her own terms, including casual relationships with lots of men. Her father was a Vice President at Radcliffe, Harvard’s “sister school,” and it would seem that solving the murder of his daughter would be a high priority for both campus and Cambridge police…

Forty years later, as a student at Harvard, Becky Cooper was fascinated when she heard the story that had been told for many years about a professor who had murdered a female graduate student with whom he had been involved in an affair. The professor and the student, Jane Britton, had worked together at an archaeological dig in Iran, and he was allegedly freaked out about a scandal harming his chances to get tenure. As the story was told to Ms. Cooper, the professor used a stone tool from Harvard’s Peabody Museum to bludgeon Jane to death, then took her body into the museum where he draped her with jewelry and sprinkled her body with red ochre powder. Harvard, wanting to avoid any bad publicity, covered up the crime, silenced the press, and stopped the investigation, protecting the professor — who was still on the faculty!

This fascinating book details Ms. Cooper’s decade-long obsession with Jane’s story (reminiscent of Michelle McNamara’s obsession with the Golden State Killer, chronicled in her outstanding book I’ll Be Gone In The Dark). It’s extremely detailed and well written, and is really two complete stories in one: the murder mystery itself with its subsequent investigation/possible coverup, and Ms. Cooper’s obsessive quest to find the truth and tell Jane’s story.

Ms. Cooper’s affinity for Jane is clear when she writes “I understood –or at least believed that I did–that at the center of this brilliant, vivacious woman was a loneliness and a fundamental need to find somewhere to belong that I knew all too well.” Harvard was a difficult place for women when Jane was a student. Although women were admitted to Harvard by the time she was enrolled there, they weren’t allowed to enter Lamont, the undergraduate library, had to search for one of only nine women’s bathrooms on campus, and could go by invitation with a male to the Freshman Union, but had to endure the tradition of men clinking their forks on their glasses when a female entered.

The book gives us Ms. Cooper’s story in detail, and explores the extent to which Harvard’s power was exerted. It’s astonishing the amount of effort that seemed to go in to burying the investigation, and keeping Harward’s reputation intact. Ms. Cooper is a relentless researcher, as indicated by her two years of attempts to contact John Fulkerson, one of the Cambridge cops who reopened Jane’s case in the 1990s. She finally meets up with him, and he tells her “Things are being hidden, and I don’t know why.”


In the end, Ms. Cooper’s monumental effort pays off, and although I NEVER reveal spoilers, I admit I appreciated the reveal at the end of the book. The long investigation was grueling for her, and she mused about how writing a story can impact an author deeply. She was obsessed with Jane, and the breadth and depth of her research made her very thoughtful, shown by her reflection on the experience: “Some days, I don’t even know what to tell you about Jane. I know even less about whether telling a responsible story of the past is possible, having learned all too well how the act of interpretation molds the facts in service of the storyteller…there are no true stories; there are only facts, and the stories we tell ourselves about those facts.”

Unfortunately right before I read this book the Boston Globe ran on article on Jane's death in the Sunday magazine, so I knew how she had died. However, even knowing the outcome, I still found the story interesting--the politics of Harvard University was especially compelling. The author also looked into Jane's character more than the Globe article, so she became much more real. I also like Ms. Cooper's honesty about her feelings about the outcome of the investigation--how it took her time to accept it after putting so much time and effort into trying to figure out who killed her that it was just a (spoiler alert) random killing.

These types of books always tend to amaze me. It could be the lack of interested to investigate properly by the police. Or the response from the community. This one is the time period. It is amazing the differences you see from the 1960's to now. Yet we all know they are there, we still don't think much of them till we read about them. This case is heart breaking and captivating. A must read for any true crime lover.

This is not your typical true crime book, and that’s very much a good thing. At the same time, it’s a caution to readers who pick it up expecting a run-of-the-mill true crime yarn. This is not that, but it is a stunning achievement—a whodunit page turner with an unexpected ending that is both shocking and, sadly, a little disappointing.

But no spoilers here. To discover who exactly killed Jane Britton, a 23-year-old graduate student at Harvard University or, perhaps more accurately, who the authorities say killed Jane Britton back in 1969, you’ll have to read to the end of the story. It’s worth it.

In this reviewer's opinion, this is one of the best books of 2020. Author Becky Cooper’s quest to learn the truth about Jane Britton’s 50-year-old unsolved murder is a fascinating journey that ultimately leads to any number of truths about murder, relationships, justice, misogyny and powerful institutions.

To begin, it’s surprising that Jane Britton’s murder was unsolved for so long. She was Caucasian, went to Harvard (or Radcliffe in those days), lived just off campus in university owned housing, and her father was a senior administrator at the university. Surely there was pressure on the police to find her killer.

Given the bare bones outline of the story, it’s not surprising that the tabloid reporters came running; even New York City newspapers had Jane’s murder on the front page. Jane was an outspoken, outgoing anthropology student whose murder had earmarks of a ritual killing. Red ochre was sprinkled around her body, a substance used for burials rituals in various cultures many archeologist comes across.

That fact alone made it seem as though someone associated with Harvard’s anthropology department had committed the murder, and there were long whispered rumors that Jane had been having an affair with a professor who was about to get tenure. If his affair with Jane became known, his tenure would be lost. Did someone say motive?

Enter author Becky Cooper, herself a student at Harvard when she first hears the rumors about the murder casually. Jane Britton’s murder is something of an oft-told cautionary tale passed down from student to student about what happens to co-eds who sleep with their professors. What’s more, the rumor mongers tell Cooper, Jane’s alleged killer is still a respected professor—with tenure—in the Harvard anthropology department. How can this be? Cooper wonders.

Cooper graduates and stores the story away but cannot shake it. A year or so later, by then a researcher at The New Yorker, Cooper gets the investigative reporting bug, quits her job, and resolves to uncover Jane’s murderer. It’s a story inside a story, not just of an unsolved murder but of a reporter’s determination to find the truth.

But how to begin? Because Cooper is not an actual investigative reporter, she is daunted by the prospect of talking to sources, taking days to work up the courage to call Jane’s friends, and going down paths that lead nowhere.

How does one talk to the police and the district attorney? How can she, who has no standing in journalism circles, get them to cooperate? Will Jane’s friends and acquaintances even want to revisit her murder?

Cooper makes a breakthrough when one of Jane’s close friends agrees to talk. This friend, Elisabeth, brings Jane to life: “[She was] a kick in the pants. She was sort of like a combination of Groucho Marx and Dorothy Parker, just without the mustache.”

And just like that, Cooper is off and running with one friend leading to another and then another. As many a reporter has learned, persistence pays off. When friends and relatives of a victim understand that you care about the murder victim nearly as much as they do, doors open.

Cooper’s initial naïveté is one of the charms of the book. We see her tackling her own self-confidence in real time, and we take the journey with her as she becomes more of a seasoned reporter and researcher.

Along the way, any number of Jane’s friends seem like they may have had something to do with her death. One of the most fascinating threads involves a fellow student who had a crush on Jane. This same fellow later accompanies a different female researcher, Anne Abraham, to Labrador where Abraham mysteriously disappears. It seems too much of a coincidence and, as Cooper discovers, she’s not the only one who thinks that. Two other women, not associated with each other, have studied this suspect for years, trying to understand why he was with or nearby Jane Britton and Anne Abraham when they died.

But that’s only one of many roads Cooper travels down. Aside from the potential murder suspects, Cooper delves into the misogyny faced by many brilliant women at Harvard back in the day and the way the patriarchy affected their lives and careers.

By the end of the book, Cooper does learn the identity of Jane Britton’s killer. She’s not sure she entirely believes it, but the police do, and the district attorney closes the case. That revelation takes us down yet another sociological road into the way the criminal justice system operated back in the 1960s and ’70s. It’s one more lesson for Cooper in a book full of them. Luckily for the reader, we get to go along for the ride.

We Keep the Dead Close is a meticulously researched and well-crafted work. It has the feel of a mashup of genres: part memoir, part true crime, part investigative journalism. It somehow manages to work on all fronts. The author's interest in the story is personal. She attended Harvard, as did the victim. She'd heard about the crime as a student. Her personal ties, however, serve to drive her curiosity and add a personal familiarity with the details, while not polluting her objectivity about the subject that she is writing.

The book offers a detailed and deep dive into the history of the crime and into all the the players. Social and gender dynamics at the time at Harvard are explored. The author maintains the tension throughout this long book by moving around to the various aspects of this analysis rather than staying completely linear in her coverage.

If you enjoy true crime, investigative journalism or simply a story well told, this book may be for you.

We published https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/fifty-year-old-harvard-murder-mystery-still-has-lessons-today on this book.

Literary true crime (The Devil in the White City, In Cold Blood, In the Garden of Good and Evil) is one of my favorite sub-genres and the good ones are rare finds! We Keep the Dead Close is part true crime, part memoir (Cooper shares her own story of investigating Jane’s death and the effect it had on her) and reminded me of I’ll Be Gone in the Dark in that way. It has a super atmospheric setting and Harvard feels like a romantic, yet sinister character. The story is full of intriguing, larger than life personalities. It also feels a bit like a gossipy expose of Harvard and the Anthropology department specifically…the rampant sexism, the insular “protect Harvard’s reputation at all costs” mentality, and the interdepartmental politics of academia. Cooper’s writing is excellent and that’s not something that generally jumps out at me when reading true crime. Though this book is long, it’s broken up into smaller sections and has pictures throughout, so it moves faster than you’d think. It will likely be the last book I add to my Best Books of 2020 list and is one of the better true crime books I’ve ever read!

This was an outstanding true crime book that also included memoir-like aspects. Becky Cooper feels drawn to the 1969 unsolved murder of Harvard archaeology student Jane Britton. Cooper spends years investigating the case and interviewing many that knew Britton. The Harvard campus itself becomes almost a character. This is truly well written true crime fiction that comes with a conclusion.

Review of We Keep the Dead Close: Becky Cooper’s true crime book is straight up urban legend. It’s about Jane Britton, a grad student at Harvard, who was murdered in her apartment and whose killer has never been brought to justice. It has all the elements of a TV drama: Britton was supposed to be worldy and had a troubling relationship with her dad and stepmom; might have had an affair with a married professor; and was studying archeology at Harvard in a time where many women didn’t get degrees, much less advanced degrees (the murder happened in the ’60s).

Cooper does a careful job of explaining what officially was explained and the person blamed for it and then goes into why the investigation stalled out. Britton had so many things working against her: gender and class mainly, not to mention incompetent policing. Cooper peels back the onion so delicately that it makes you wonder just how anyone’s murder has ever been solved.

We Keep the Dead Close wasn’t exactly a quick read but it was an entertaining one. It was one part Mad Men and one part Crime Junkies (they should have gotten Ashley Flower to narrate the audiobook) and those pages kept turning themselves.

This story was captivating. Regardless of the outcome, I admire the well of perseverance and guts Becky Cooper drew from to bring this story to us. Additionally, the inclusion of Ms. Cooper’s own history in relation to the years she spent researching Jane’s story is interesting and not distracting from the information she presents about Jane and the events leading to Jane’s death. It is interesting to see how institutional norms, outside of societal norms, contributed to the overall narrative that surrounded the tragedy.. This story was just as much about Harvard’s terribly slow progression forward from historic misogyny, as it was about Jane and Becky. The melding of these themes was flawless. Great book.

Well written, well researched, and very thorough. But, I picked this up because i thought that this was going to be the rare true crime that is solved in the end. And, while that is sort of the case, the end is very dissatisfying.

- I adore the setting of this book. I love college campuses, especially ones fraught with secrets and mystery. I never cared about the history of Harvard until I read this book and it's fascinating!⁣
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- For all intents and purposes, Jane Britton's death was never truly investigated and it didn't seem like her family was super torn up about it. I am amazed by this! As a mother, I'd go to the ends of the earth to discover the truth if something this horrific happened to my children.⁣
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- The amount of research that went into this book is nothing short of astonishing. You can tell that Becky poured her heart, soul and sanity into writing this book. The writing is beautiful, haunting and atmospheric - the perfect storm for a novel in this genre and released at this time of year.⁣
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- This is not a quick read. You'll need to be in the right headspace with lots of free time on your hands. Also - PAY ATTENTION. There are a lot of characters and subplots in this one.

I had no idea that any of this happened and as a true crime junkie - I was shocked. This book is well written and well researched.

Only time will tell for sure, but this could be an instant true crime classic. Skillfully crafted, gorgeously written, and meticulously researched. Total immersion into the life of the victim, Jane Britton, and into the lives of those who cared about her. Fifty years of history brought back to life by the author, Becky Cooper, in incredible detail. Cooper also does some nimble work jumping between past and present while examining the very nature of history, storytelling, and the achingly human need to make sense of the world.

This incredibly researched and detailed account of a murder that went unsolved for decades was absolutely fascinating. Author Becky Cooper spent many years tracking down and interviewing individuals who knew Jane Britton as she researched the case and fought for access to records. This isn't lurid, sensational true crime- this is written in a very literary style and while out of necessity it does describe some details of the crime, the story focuses more on who Jane was- a complex, fascinating individual whose trajectory was cut short. There's a lot of discussion of the issues of sexism and access in academia, especially as it existed in the late '60s, and of how that impacted Jane. Jane's tragedy deeply influenced not just the author, who shares how much time and effort she put into her research, but that of those Jane knew in her lifetime. Highly recommended (and not just for those who already have an interest in true crime).

Becky Cooper was an undergraduate at Harvard when she first heard about the unsolved murder of Jane Britton decades prior in 1969. Jane was studying archaeology at Harvard when she was found brutally murdered in her apartment and the crime had gone unsolved.
It felt appropriate that to tell Jane’s story, Becky had to dig deep in to the Harvard archaeology department. Her depth of research over the course of ten years was impressive spending unfathomable hours to create a vivid portrait of Jane through letters, the memories of friends, interviews, and Jane’s journaling. It’s a well crafted and suspenseful book that delves deeper than a true crime reconstruction, but is also a brilliant memoir.
It’s not often that I schlep a book everywhere I go, sneaking in an extra page here and there. But I couldn’t get enough of Jane’s story and Becky’s writing. If you don’t read nonfiction, still make time for this book, it won’t disappoint.

I love true crime, and have been craving it lately. In WE KEEP THE DEAD CLOSE, Becky Cooper becomes consumed with Jane Britton, a woman who was murdered in her Harvard apartment in 1969. Becky shares the discoveries she made along the way while digging into Jane’s story. This one took me 5 days to finish, as it is over 500 pages and has a lot of information to unpack. There were multiple suspects within the archaeology department at Harvard and there was half a century of silence.

I enjoyed that this one was different from other books I’ve read in the True Crime genre— in the sense that it was more of a combination of memoir and true crime. As you are questioning how Jane’s murder went unsolved for so long and new information comes to light, you are also learning about what the author Becky Cooper was experiencing in her life.