For whatever reason, I was OBSESSED with the Boston Marathon bombing investigation, and all things tangential – including the Waltham murders, and Ibragim Todashev’s fatal interview with the FBI. There has been a certain lack of transparency in regards to some of these things, and Zalkind’s book with all her own investigative journalism on the topics was everything I could have hoped for and more. I was absolutely riveted from start to finish.
Zalkind’s reporting style here is top notch. She shares all of her primary and secondary sources as she is able to, and is sure to point out that people may or may not be telling the truth and that she can’t tell you which it is, but she presents what evidence she has that may either support or refute what others have told her in her interviews. In the end she is able to say, “Here is what the evidence shows happened in Waltham/with Todashev, and here is why authorities have never told the public about it (not even the families of the victims murdered over a decade ago)”. Her investigation and reporting is thorough, and she never makes unsubstantiated claims, but rather always supports her conclusions with what she was able to learn, with the caveat that there may be more we don’t know and what that other information might possibly pertain to. Her personal relationship with one of the murder victims does not prevent her manner of reporting from being admirably professional.
The organization of the book did throw me a bit at times, but I assumed the author had her reasons for presenting the information in the order she chose, and I was always able to follow.
My Kindle tells me that I made 275 highlights in this book – some of those are of multiple paragraphs! There is just so much here that I want to be able to look back at. I think this likely means I should just reread the whole thing sometime. I got the ebook version for free through the Amazon Prime First Reads program, but am planning on buying a print copy of the book to support the author and all the amazing work she has done over the past 10+ years, uncovering truths about a topic I have long been fascinated by.
Jessica Crawford 