The Book of Cold Cases

“It was an ugly Frankenstein of a house even when it was built–a pseudo-Victorian style of slanted roofs and spires, though the walls were of butter yellow brick. And when Julian Greer bought it in 1950 with his newly inherited pharmaceutical fortune, he made it worse.”

St. James chooses to begin the novel with an anonymous third person narrator that focuses on the Greer mansion, Beth Greer’s home. In this way, St. James pulls the house into sharp focus, and it will remain a symbol of Beth’s family’s dysfunction throughout the novel. In addition, St. James uses these chapters to personify the house, creating another character that will haunt Shea and Beth throughout the book.

“The woman sitting twenty feet away from me, reading a book, was Beth Greer. And in 1977, she’d been Claire Lake’s most famous murderer.”

After St. James establishes the status quo life of Shea, the protagonist, she upsets that status quo by introducing Beth Greer into her life. This is where the story truly begins. Beth and her story are irresistible to Shea, a true crime blogger, and will also be the catalyst for Shea’s personal transformation throughout the novel.

“Rich didn’t mean happy, but no one cared about that, least of all the cops who looked at her and saw the girl who would turn them down if they talked to her in a bar.”

Beth identifies two distinct reasons she receives so little sympathy and understanding in the course of the Lady Killer investigation. One is the assumption that because she has money she could not be unhappy, or if she is she has no excuse for that unhappiness. The second is that the police, as men, held her money and beauty against her, as it made them feel inferior.