Decades-old L.A. killing explored in rich detail

For nearly 50 years after her murder in Los Angeles in 1969, the anonymous victim was known only as Jane Doe #59. Four and a half decades later, by a fluke, she was finally identified: Reet Jurvetson, a Canadian killed far from home. But who killed her, and why?

The questions haunted crime non-fiction writer Catherine Fogarty, so much so that she launched a podcast to explore the crime, and then spent the next several years re-investigating the cold case. Her new book, The Girl With No Name (HarperAvenue, 336 pages, $27) chronicles her investigation and finally tells the whole tragic story of Reet Jurvetson.

As she did in Murder on the Inside (2021), Fogarty recreates the historical events so vividly that it’s easy to imagine we’ve stepped back in time; the writing is superb, as dramatic as any novel. It’s top-flight crime non-fiction.

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Meet Cal Jenkins: born with one leg shorter than the other and exempted from military service, he’s built a pleasant life for himself while the U.S. wages war in Europe and the Pacific — until an impulsive indiscretion threatens to destroy everything he has built.

Beginning in the years leading up to the Second World War and spanning decades, Patrick Ryan’s Buckeye (Random House, 480 pages, $29) is a story of love, consequence, the fragility of secrets and the power of forgiveness. It’s the kind of novel you read, think about for a while and then read again, just because the story is so moving, the characters so genuine, that you want to spend more time with them.

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In 2025, Cory Doctorow published Enshittification, a dissection of the ways online platforms intentionally degrade their services and abuse their users. His new book, The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to Life After AI (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 240 pages, $25) zeroes in on the uses — and, more frequently, misuses — of artificial intelligence (AI).

Who does AI actually benefit? (Not the users, says Doctorow.) Can it really, as its creators claim, be trained to do the jobs of human beings, as well as human beings do them? (Not a chance in hell, says Doctorow.)

Doctorow’s latest no anti-AI rant; he’d be the first guy to tell you AI can be a useful tool (in, say, statistical analysis), but that it has the potential to be, and frequently already is, exploited, misapplied and inflicted upon people who haven’t asked for it, and whose lives are destroyed by it. Angry and witty and vastly, frighteningly informative, the book should come with some sort of “essential reading” sticker affixed to it.

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Cory Doctorow will be at McNally Robinson’s Grant Park location on Friday at 7 p.m. to launch The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to Life After AI.

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If you’re a fan of mysteries, odds are you’ve read a few Agatha Christie novels. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, perhaps. Murder on the Orient Express, surely.

Over the past decade or so, Sophie Hannah has written several novels featuring Christie’s most famous character, Hercule Poirot, and now Lucy Foley, author of the spectacular thrillers The Guest List and The Hunting Party, has given Christie fans the greatest gift of all: Murder at the Grand Alpine Hotel (William Morrow, 304 pages, $27).

Starring Christie’s other great creation, Miss Jane Marple, this is such a wonderful novel that it’s easy for a Christie fan to imagine it was written by Dame Agatha herself. It’s not a pastiche, not an imitation; it’s a brand new story told by someone who clearly understands what made Christie’s Marple stories so much fun.

The murder mystery is beguiling and suspenseful, but it’s the cast of characters who pull us into the story. What a great bunch of murder suspects. What a satisfying conclusion.

You’ll love it, and you’ll hope Foley treats us with another Christie mystery.

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Halifax freelancer David Pitt’s column appears the first weekend of every month. You can follow him on Bluesky at @bookman.bsky.social.