Most true crime stories these days meander around, going off on tangents, trying to be about society, because often at the end--there's no resolution. Sometimes those still manage to be satisfying (hello Michelle McNamara!) but other times they're just... frustrating. I get that it seemed like telling the story of an unsolved murder sounded interesting but if after years of research you still can't figure it out, well, in my book that book should have stayed in a drawer.

Catch the Sparrow does neither. Rachel stays on topic, and there's a resolution! I won't say any more about that to not give even a hint of a spoiler but yes, and the end you know whodunit. And I think Rachel was able to stay on topic for an unusual reason--she's related to the young woman who was murdered. One might think the lack of distance would be problematic, but it's not at all. Plus, she actually did have some distance because she never met Stephanie. See, Stephanie was murdered a few years before Stephanie's father and Rachel's mother got married. Although they were in a small town so she certainly knew of Stephanie's disappearance since it happened.

Stephanie seemed rather glamorous--becoming a music teacher like her father, and escaping their tiny upstate New York town for the high income, full of tourists Martha's Vineyard for a couple of years. After her return, escaping from a bad relationship, she seemed to be back on track with a new job and a new boyfriend and then... she vanished. Police followed several leads but they petered out.

Ms. Rear is in the perfect position to get people to trust her, and to give tons of backstory, of Stephanie, her father, and even Rachel's own family history. And Rachel is of course in a position where she wasn't willing to give up and was probably going to chase this story until its conclusion no matter how long it took. So here we have a well-written, riveting true crime story mixed with more than the usual amount of poignant memoir, with a satisfying end.

This book is published by Bloomsbury Press, which is distributed by Macmillan, my employer.

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