This reads more like a memoir than true crime coverage.  It is a real middle of the road book for me.  I was very interested in the subject and wanted to learn more about the case, but I think I’d have learned more about it if I’d done my own research (which I will now do).

Erika has a face that makes strangers tell her their deepest secrets.  After a chance encounter with a lawyer in a bookstore, she finds herself starting a job as a private investigator, despite her lack of formal experience.  The case that dominates the book concerns the pervasive rape culture and constant coverups of the University of Colorado football team.  Herself a survivor of sexual violence, Erika becomes obsessed with the case, her investigation branching off into her own life, into her relationships with the family members who deny, or simply don’t care, that she was sexually abused as a child.  Amidst descriptions of the Colorado landscape—breathtaking yet harsh—Erika learns the tricks of the P.I. trade, offering snippets of the profession’s evolution between recollections of her own research and interviews.  She scrambles to gather enough evidence to make someone do something about the sexual violence faced by her plaintiffs, but it’s not just for them, it’s for her, too.

Tell Me Everything is stunning and fascinating—part memoir, part true crime, but entirely an investigation.  Gabra Zackman’s narration complements the book beautifully.