Those Empty Eyes

Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses murder, death by suicide, rape (including rape of minors), child pornography, and gun violence.

Those Empty Eyes offers a searing critique of the true crime genre and the obsession with true crime narratives. The novel presents the tragedy of Alex’s family’s murders as a prototypically American true crime story: a disturbing act of violence in a suburban community spun into a titillating tale of familicide and psychopathy. Tracy Carr’s branding of Alex as “empty eyes” on the night of the murders begins to turn her into a character in the drama of her family’s tragedy—a drama that audiences obsessed with true crime will consume and feel they have a stake in, just like fans of media properties feel they have stake in those stories.

In the novel’s very first section, Garrett verbalizes its critique of true crime in his prosecution of Alex’s case. He declares: “A teenaged girl loses her entire family, and because of our society’s appetite for the morbid details of other people’s suffering […] that girl wasn’t allowed to properly finish high school” (48-49). Exemplifying this “appetite” for true crime stories are the characters Drew Estes and his girlfriend, Laverne.