{"id":754,"date":"2018-12-31T13:48:39","date_gmt":"2018-12-31T13:48:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/?p=754"},"modified":"2018-12-31T13:48:39","modified_gmt":"2018-12-31T13:48:39","slug":"lone-star-book-reviewsby-michelle-newby-nbcccontributing-editor-76","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/?p=754","title":{"rendered":"Lone Star Book ReviewsBy Michelle Newby, NBCCContributing Editor"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

<\/span><\/span><\/span>Michelle Newby<\/span> is contributing editor at Lone Star Literary Life, reviewer for Kirkus, <\/span>freelance writer, member of the National Book Critics Circle, blogger at www.TexasBookLover.com, and a moderator at the 20th annual Texas Book Festival. Her reviews appear in Pleiades Magazine, Rain Taxi, World Literature Today, High Country News, South85 Journal, The Review Review, Concho River Review, Monkeybicycle, Mosaic Literary Magazine, Atticus Review, <\/span>and The Collagist.<\/span><\/p>\n

Lone Star Book Reviews
of Texas books appear weekly
at LoneStarLiterary.com<\/a><\/span><\/h1>\n
\n

<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

<\/span><\/span>TRUE CRIME<\/p>\n

Beverly Lowry<\/span><\/p>\n

Who Killed These Girls?: Cold Case: The Yogurt Shop Murders<\/span><\/p>\n

Alfred A. Knopf<\/p>\n

Hardcover, 978-0-3075-9411-2 (also available as an ebook and on Audible), 400 pgs., $27.95<\/p>\n

October 2016<\/p>\n

Every Austinite, every Texan, knows the basic facts of this horrific crime.<\/span> On Friday, December 6, 1991, the Austin Fire Department responded to a report of a fire at an I Can\u2019t Believe It\u2019s Yogurt! shop in northwest Austin. Inside the shop, they discovered the bodies of Eliza Hope Thomas (17), sisters Jennifer Ann Harbison (17) and Sarah Louise Harbison (15), and Amy Leigh Ayers (13).<\/p>\n

Finally, in 1999, four young men (\u201cthree aimless dudes, one troublemaker with firepower and wheels\u201d) were arrested, despite the complete lack of physical evidence. Two were never brought to trial because the case against one was dismissed, and a grand jury twice refused to indict the other; but two confessed, later recanting confessions that ultimately turned out to be false (\u201cI\u2019m scared I have information and don\u2019t know I have information\u201d). They were convicted, but those convictions were reversed and the cases remanded by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. In 2008, DNA results, thanks to more sophisticated testing than was previously available, excluded all four suspects.<\/p>\n

Accordingly, the most confounding and fascinating aspects of Who Killed These Girls?<\/span> is a discussion of interrogation techniques and an exploration of the nature and processes of memory and the phenomenon of false confessions. How do we know what we think we know?<\/p>\n

Who Killed These Girls?: Cold Case: The Yogurt Shop Murders<\/span><\/a><\/span> by Beverly Lowry<\/span> is the latest entry in a recent spate of high-profile narrative nonfiction titles on Texas true crime. Who Killed These Girls?<\/span> is a dramatic story told in dramatic fashion. Lowry writes in lively first-person, her personality apparent on every page. This is an effective and engaging technique, informal and colloquial, that only occasionally strays into the purple. Lowry\u2019s account grabs you on the first page and doesn\u2019t let up.<\/p>\n

Lowry conducted prodigious research, attended court hearings, watched the recorded interrogations, and interviewed the principals. She even got her hands on Judge Mike Lynch\u2019s personal journal. Her recreations of the police interrogations are harrowing, even frightening. Lowry does an outstanding job of invoking the girls as human beings. They are quite real and very present in these pages. Her portrayal of detective John Jones is likeable and sympathetic.<\/p>\n

Lowry\u2019s writing is atmospheric, sometimes spooky (\u201cby Thursday the air had turned sulky, with an unnatural stillness that makes people testy as they wait for whatever\u2019s about to happen next\u201d), sometimes an assault (\u201cJennifer \u2026 wore a Timex wristwatch with a big face and a sturdy black band. She will die wearing the watch, it will stop at 11:48\u201d), sometimes startlingly snarky (\u201cRobert Ayers, who once again told tender stories about his daughter\u201d), sometimes, but infrequently, seemingly gratuitously graphic.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s an unexpected, sardonic humor to Lowry\u2019s narrative. \u201cWith its big-time celebration of Eeyore\u2019s birthday, its dog parades, costumes and flummery, Austin was Slackerville,\u201d she writes, with \u201crock music, goofball pot smokers and drunken legislators \u2026 While Houstonians liked to say Austin was hoping to become a grown-up city, too, someday, nobody here took offense. Who wanted to be like Houston?\u201d<\/p>\n

Twenty-five years later, we still don\u2019t know who killed these girls. \u201cYogurt Shop jurors did their job, so did the lawyers and the judge. But in the end, nobody was satisfied with how things turned out. Nobody at all.\u201d<\/p>\n

* * * * *<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Michelle Newby is contributing editor at Lone Star Literary Life, reviewer for Kirkus, freelance writer, member of the National Book Critics Circle, blogger at www.TexasBookLover.com, and a moderator at the 20th annual Texas Book Festival. Her reviews appear in Pleiades Magazine, Rain Taxi, World Literature Today, High Country News, South85 Journal, The Review Review, Concho […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-754","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/754","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=754"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/754\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}