I really enjoyed What Ever Happened to Eddy Crane? by Kate Crane. The author is a few years older than me and it takes place in and around Baltimore all in places I know very well. I had actually followed the author on Twitter a long time ago and she talked a bit about her father’s murder and her looking into it there so I was very eager to read this!

I was not disappointed. The first half is largely memoir because it deals with her being a child when her father went missing and was probably murdered. The second half is her as an adult deciding to make a concerted effort into finding out what happened to him. I’m no David Simon fan (and he puts her dad’s death into two of his shows without telling them first!) but he is relatively helpful to her as he had written a story about the crime five years after it happened. I wish we knew why he wrote about it then but we didn’t get that detail. Her investigation goes over several years and some Cold Case detectives are more helpful than others which is a frustrating to read. Her mother and sister were both very difficult people and it’s amazing she retains a relationship with either of them. The author’s life has been challenging and I can see the effort it took her to write this book.

A great memoir not only about crime but family and memories. Bonus content of some glimpses into the Baltimore and DC punk scene.