I’m a big fan of all things true crime, especially books. This one was very intriguing and I found myself having a hard time putting it down.

I LOVE and LIVE for true crime! While this sounded like I would really enjoy this, it was not executed in a way that I would have liked. The story was good and enjoyable, but I felt it didn't flow easily.

*Thank you @randomhouse for the copy in exchange for an honest review. Review not posted to Amazon/Goodreads because less than 4 stars or DNF.*

I enjoyed the first half of the book and found it to be a fascinating read. The second half of the book I found to be a bit tedious to get through.

I love true crime, so I was excited to read this book by a new-to-me author. It is about the murder of two police officers at a rest stop......I don't want to say more because you need to read the book to find out the rest. All I will say is that it is an engrossing story and will have you turning the page to find out what happens next!

The subject matter is heavy, I had no idea this book was a true story until after I finished. It very much read like a good novel. It does get repetitive at times as the same event is told by different people and the basic facts don't change. Overall it was a good book but not very intriguing.

As an advocate against the death penalty and someone who has spent time researching innocents on death row, this novel was right up my alley and a must read. Ellen is a journalist turned private investigator with a case she can't get out of her mind which has haunted her for decades - the execution of Jesse Tafero, who she is convinced was an innocent man.

This true crime narrative will stick with you, and as you read the details of Ellen's hunt for the truth, you can feel how deeply personal this is for her. This book does jump around a lot and isn't always easy to follow, but Ellen's search for justice kept me turning the pages as she collects evidence in meticulous detail. My one complaint is that this book did get a bit repetitive and it really is more of a journey of self for Ellen, not really about the particular crime itself that has kept her obsessed for years. A good read, but not my favorite true crime memoir.

Thank you NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

For some reason, I just couldn't get into this book. I adore true crime so I was thrilled to get a copy of this. I definitely wasn't grabbing for this one, but overall it was very well written and researched

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group - Random House for this copy of Two Truths and a Lie by Ellen McGarrahan.

Two truths and a Lie is a very hard book to categorize, part true crime, part memoir. As true crime it was very good, as a memoir it was outstanding. Ellen McGarrahan witnesses the carrying out of the death sentence at the start of a career in journalism. McGarrahan eventually leaves journalism behind but can never shake what she witnessed years before at that execution. The execution of Jesse Tafero haunts the author through her adult life until she decides to find out the truth of Jesse's life and death and if a mistake was made on death row that day.

I really liked this book. Very well written and constructed. All of the obvious, and some not so obvious, questions are answered. It was a little long for me though, I kept feeling that the story had been told and didn't need to be repeated. That's not a big deal in a book with such great writing. Fans of true crime and memoir are in for a treat with this one!

What an amazing, haunting and unforgettable book that will make its readers question everything they think they know about that ever-so fragile concept we call The Truth.

Haunted by a botched execution she witnessed as a cub reporter, Ellen McGarrahan goes on an epic journey of personal discovery and professional reckoning in an effort to understand what happened in the blink of an eye that left 2 police officers dead, 2 people on death row and a third behind bars.

What she uncovers is as harrowing and lengths she goes to find it. In the end, nothing is what it seems.

I love True Crime books and I was really looking forward to this one. But I had a hard time getting into this one and felt like I really really had to push myself to continue to read it. As a true crime book I would rate it at 2.5 stars. I didn't hate it, but I also didn't enjoy it. After finishing it I tried to figure out why I didn't enjoy it and decided it was because the entire book was really about the author. Had it been described as a memoir instead of true crime, I actually think I would have liked it more...rated it 3.5 to maybe even 4 stars. It wasn't a bad book, just not the book I had hoped for.

This is a great book!! Kept me interested and hanging on. Jesse Tafero is an interesting person....I keep going back and forth on what I think. Those poor families, and what they all had to go through for so many years. I would like to think that the court got it all correct....but did they?

Two Truths and a Lie by Ellen McGarrahan is a superb and engrossing read which will keep you reading until the end. Well worth the read!

I received a complimentary digital copy of this book from Random House and NetGalley in exchange for an unbiased review.

In Starke, Fl 1990, Jesse Tafero was a man on death row whose botched execution was witnessed by the author who was working as a reporter at the time. The 7 minutes it took for him to die after first the wires catching fire and 3 jolts was a trauma she would live with for years and ultimately consume her life.

It all ultimately began in February 1976 when a police officers were killed while making a routine check at a rest stop. They never expected the violence which ended their lives when they approached the beat up Camero with 3 adults and 2 kids sleeping. As it turned out, the occupants of the car were Walter Rhodes, Jesse Tafero and his girlfriend Sunny along with a baby and 9 yo son. They all have a shady criminal history and had weapons visible in the car when the police approached. What happened after that was total chaos leaving 2 police officers dead and the perpetrators pointing fingers at each other.

The story was so compelling that Barbara Walters covered the story on 20/20 television show. It was then made into a documentary play called Exonerated which again drew attention and speculation to the case. The main theory was that Jesse Tafero was the shooter which eventually freed Sunny from prison. The case was complicated with Rhodes confessing and retracting his confession several times.

The book is primarily about the author and her quest to discover the truth of the case. Since she felt burdened with guilt and confusion when questions arose to whether Jesse was innocent and executed unjustly. In 1992, she drives to CA and works in construction as a break from journalism. She slowly works her way into private detective work and eventually follows through with obtaining necessary training to work full-time. Meanwhile, she meets Peter a fellow private detective who patiently ensures her years long quest around the globe to satisfy the lingering questions of the Tafero case.

Her obsession with wanting to know the details of that fatal day were disturbing to say the least.
It’s understandable that after witnessing the execution and then questions of his innocence emerge were would be deeply unsettling. Her investigation into the truth was interesting and eventually revealed that these were all dangerous people involved in more dangerous criminal activity than initially revealed. When she begins uncovering connections with the Mafia and big time drug dealers, I’m thinking, clearly whatever happened none of them were innocent.

But, I found the author becomes unhinged with tracking down information and chasing dangerous people to discuss past criminal events. She clearly reflects on how her intrigue for information overwhelmed her common sense. The more she uncovers the more complex and dangerous the story becomes at which point…does it really matter? I’m thinking great work turn around and go home. Oh, please don’t go to Ireland to find Sunny. And no, don’t go to Australia to track down her son! Please say no when invited to spend the night with Rhodes and his girlfriend. Jack Murphy. Really?!!

As much as the truth felt so paramount to the author I felt she she herself in unnecessary danger around violent criminals only to discover what was evident from the beginning.

*I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley and the publisher, in exchange for an honest review.*

As a former journalist and current private eye, Ellen McGarrahan knows how to tell a story. I found this book to be very readable, and appreciated her attention to detail and thoroughness in exploring the minutia of this case. There were a lot of different people involved in the case, and I liked how the author often took the time to remind the reader who each of the players was after several chapters passed in which they were not mentioned. The Prologue draws the reader in immediately, and I couldn't believe the bravery, ingenuity, and downright gall the author had in seeking out and visiting all the people she found who had been connected with the case, including two of the three prime suspects. I enjoyed how the story unfolded and how the author would "return to the scene of the crime" to put together the pieces of the story as she was given them.

My biggest complaint about the book was that I found it to be extremely egocentric. Throughout the book, the author continually refers back to the idea that she is exploring this case because she witnessed the execution of the third prime suspect in 1990, and it haunted her. In the years following the execution, as she tried to put the case out of her mind, it kept coming back to her in various ways, and she could not shake the feeling of being haunted by the ghost of Jesse Tafero, the executed man. Her search for the truth of what happened, and whether or not Tafero was innocent, was in large part, driven by the author's own need to exorcise her demons. I might have enjoyed it more without the constant reminder of the author's internal battle, however, I supposed the case itself, and the author's feelings about it, were inextricably linked.

After reporting on Jesse Tafero's execution in 1990, Ellen McGarrahan was very upset to discover later, evidence was later found to prove his innocence. The anger led her to begin to go back and investigate the crime he's accused of and try to see how the executed the wrong man!
I found it very interesting and it makes you wonder, how many times has an innocent man been prosecuted and /or executed and there was no one to speak up for them.
Thank you Ellen McGarrahan, NetGalley and Random House for a copy of this book for a fair and honest review.

Thanks to Random House and Netgalley for providing this ARC. This is an interesting investigation and memoir that I would categorize as a lesser version of I’ll Be Gone in the Dark. The author goes from naive cub reporter to a haunted and obsessive private detective, searching for answers that may never come in the hopes of finding peace for herself. The investigative parts got me hooked quickly (and I originally had zero expectations for this at all) but as I got further and further into the book, I started to lose a bit of interest in the solving of the questions and by the end I felt that it was really dragging. Recommended for true crime fans.

I absolutely love true crime, but I did not enjoy this one. It started out pretty strong, but the author tended to put a lot of emphasis on herself, rather than the accused killers/victims' families.

Two Truths and a Lie by Ellen McGarrahan

For me, the best type of true crime is the kind of text that blends memoir and nonfiction so seamlessly that the writer’s perspective and their reactions to the subject of their book seem inextricably wedded to the crimes the book recounts, as well as their consequences. Ellen McGarrahan’s book is just that. Two Truths and a Lie: A Murder, A Private Investigator, and Her Search for Justice (Random House, 2021) seems as much about self-exploration as it does about finding the truth about a crime through investigative methods.

The book starts not with a crime but with the state’s approximation of justice. McGarrahan, a reporter for the Miami Herald, witnesses the execution of inmate Jesse Tafero in Florida. His crime? The shooting deaths of two police officers in a violent altercation at a rest stop in the 1970s. Due to a malfunction with the electric chair and Tafero’s own surprising magnetism, Tafero’s violent and painful death haunts McGarrahan, much as she tries for years to avoid it.

Moving from reporter to private investigator through a series of bizarre events seeming to stem from this watershed moment in McGarrhan’s life, she embarks on a stunning career that truly had me enthralled. Her small and tantalizing tidbits of her life as a PI tell me that McGarrahan could fill books with shocking stories of the criminal not-so-under-world. All the while, Tafero’s death haunts her—there are questions about the case that still don’t seem to add up, despite the fact that a man has been executed for these crimes.

These questions take the form of two other people present at the rest stop that day. Walter Rhodes and Sunny Jacobs were also in the car the day that Jesse allegedly shot the police officers. Walter testified against Jesse and Sunny in order to avoid the death penalty, but then later confessed to the killings himself—and then recanted. Sunny herself was convicted of the killings as well, but years later her conviction was overturned, and she took an Alford plea. Therefore, although Jesse was executed, there are aspects of the case that remain unresolved. Who really fired the shots that day? Did the state execute an innocent man? McGarrahan, over the course of almost three decades, finally decides to use her skills as a PI to find out.

This book gave me the distinct impression of being on a roller coaster in the dark—in a very good way. Reading this book, you really get a chance to find out how deep the rabbit hole goes as McGarrahan is haunted by this crime and her investigation. Not only are the lives of the three people involved with the crime immensely complex and wholly shocking at times, but the facts of the crime continue to get more confused and it becomes less and less clear who might have fired the gun and when. There are so many complex details that the book has a kind of ‘blink, and you’ll miss it’ character. Even the smallest detail matters here, and can turn the entire case on its head, which happens several times. For a crime that initially seems so ‘straightforward’ in the sense that there are a number of evidentiary elements and witnesses, the amount of complex evidence and contradictory testimony is shocking.

McGarrahan’s journey through this investigation is both admirable and harrowing. Coming to terms with her own trauma—trauma that does not start with Tafero’s execution—is a difficult and complex aspect of this book. It is something that is necessarily blended throughout the investigation—inextricably so. McGarrahan’s search for connection through the story of the lives of these three people and those that knew him, and her desire to answer the question of whether or not she watched an innocent man die, is a crucial aspect of this book that I greatly admired. Highly skilled and deeply connected to the case—something that does not always serve her well as an investigator—McGarrahan’s book is stunningly human and unfailingly depicts all of the messiness that this entails.

The writing here is, as I’ve said, very fast-paced throughout. While I would have liked to see the timeline represented more clearly because there is a consistent forward and backward move between people, testimony, and events, with the amount of information in this case it seems almost impossible to write a book that could link all of these elements together in another way. This case spans about half a century, and the people who have lived with this for decades have various parts to play. McGarrahan has the sharp, to the point writing style of a reporter, and I think that voice lends itself well to this book.

Underlying much of McGarrahan’s investigation is her belief that Tafero’s execution was fundamentally flawed, and that the state’s use of the death penalty is wrong. Regardless of Tafero’s involvement in the crimes, McGarrahan witnessed a man die at the state’s hands and it affected her forever. This is one of the many solid, nonnegotiable fundaments of the book, and it goes without saying that, whatever happened, this man’s violent death was not the solution.

I highly recommend Two Truths and a Lie if you’re looking for a gripping, fast-paced book with a thoughtful and insightful premise. McGarrahan’s journey through this case is a shocking one, and it will leave you guessing until the very last chapter.

If you would like to read more about the death penalty in the United States and those organizations who work to abolish it, please visit The National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. Additionally, “7 Organizations Working To End The Death Penalty,” an article from Bustle, provides a short list of current organizations in the USA working to abolish executions and also addresses some current concerns around death penalty cases in 2020/21.

Please add Two Truths and a Lie to your Goodreads shelf and have a look at Ellen McGarrahan’s About page on Penguin Random House’s website.

Don’t forget to follow True Crime Index on Twitter and please visit our Goodreads for updates on what we’re reading! You can find Rachel on her personal @RachelMFriars or on Goodreads @Rachel Friars.

About the Writer:

Rachel M. Friars (she/her) is a PhD student in the Department of English Language and Literature at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. She holds a BA and an MA in English Literature with a focus on neo-Victorianism and adaptations of Jane Eyre. Her current work centers on neo-Victorianism and nineteenth-century lesbian literature and history, with secondary research interests in life writing, historical fiction, true crime, popular culture, and the Gothic. Her academic writing has been published with Palgrave Macmillan and in The Journal of Neo-Victorian Studies. She is a reviewer for The Lesbrary, the co-creator of True Crime Index, and an Associate Editor and Social Media Coordinator for PopMeC Research Collective. Rachel is co-editor-in-chief of the international literary journal, The Lamp, and regularly publishes her own short fiction and poetry. Find her on Twitter and Goodreads.

A digital copy of this book was graciously provided to True Crime Index from Random House in exchange for an honest review.

This one starts off almost like a work of fiction, but by the 3/4 mark I was dolefully aware that it was nonfiction. Don’t get me wrong I love a good true story who dunnit but it just petered out for me at the end. I would of given this less stars had the epilogue not been so well written. The epilogue was so necessary in tying this work of nonfiction up.

“You don’t always know who is telling you the truth and who is lying-especially in a situation like this. I guarantee you, there’s some people that can lie so good that you could not bust them.” This is the crux of the plot. A journalist needing to find an answer to a crime that haunts her past. Did she witness the execution of an innocent man? Two truths and a lie, 3 people involved in a deadly crime but only 1 person is telling the truth. Ellen sets off on a year long journey to figure out the truth and put the past that haunts her to bed, once and for all.

Journalist turned private investigator turned author Ellen McGarrahan covered and attended the execution of Jesse Tafero, 43, in May 1990 in Stark, Florida. Tafero, convicted for the murders of two policemen, did not die easily. The electric chair malfunctioned, sending out flames and smoke, and required three jolts of electricity over the course of seven minutes rather than the usual one jolt and one minute to kill the prisoner. It would haunt McGarrahan for decades to come. So much so, that after she quit her job as a journalist and became a private investigator she decided to look into the case and determine for herself whether, as she suspected, an innocent man had died at the state's hands.

The truth of what happened the day the police officers were murdered will most likely never be known in full, but there appear to have been sufficient contradictions in the evidence and testimonies associated with the case that it seems odd to this reader that the prosecution was able to prove Tafero's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt to a jury.

The read overall is a bit uneven; steady and even gripping in some parts, a bit boggy and repetitive in others; but that's probably the way real investigations go. Though the basis of the book is the guilt or innocence of Tafero, the broader issue on the board is the death penalty itself and whether it provides justice.

My thanks to NetGalley and Random House for permitting me access to an advanced copy of the book which is scheduled for publication on 2/2/21. Opinions stated in this review are my own.