I’ve been a fan of Mark Bowden’s wiring for years. Black Hawk Down, Killing Pablo, etc. I’m also a fan of the true crime genre, so I jumped at the chance to get a copy of The Case of the Vanishing Blonde from Grove Atlantic and NetGalley in exchange for this honest review.

The title is taken from a story written by Mr. Bowden in 2010 about a murder in Florida in 2005. In it, he recounts the story of a woman who, while living in the Airport Regency  hotel, was raped, beaten, and left for dead. Her lawsuit against the hotel prompted the hotel’s private detective, Ken Brennan, to follow a hunch and track down the man responsible.

This and five other stories have been compiled into a book that will be enjoyed by fans of Bowden, true crime, or just good narrative nonfiction in general. My favorite was of the six was probably “The Incident at Alpha Tau Omega,” first published in the Philadelphia Inquirer in 1983. As Bowden notes,  back then “we reporters competed vigorously for the paper’s limited news hole. You learned fast that a good crime yarn was a shortcut to page one.” In the intro, he comments that back when this story of a gang rape at a frat house was first published, the predominant view of newsroom staff was that any woman “…foolish enough to attend a college frat party drunk and tripping on acid could more or less expect to be sexually assaulted.” In retrospect, Bowden is proud of how the story explored the moral gray  areas in addition to the binary question of “rape vs. not rape.”

Might prompt some interesting book group discussions about the change in attitudes as well as the role of private investigations in criminal investigations. Four stars.