REVIEW:

Ooooh boy, have I got a doozy of a book to tell you about! Erika Krouse’s Tell Me Everything delivers just about everything that attracts me to nonfiction and will keep you enthralled from start to finish if you:

• want to know how an average jane can go from minimum wage temp jobs to becoming a private investigator.

• like true crime but are tiring of the “crime” always being murder.

• enjoy beautifully-written memoirs, even about difficult subjects.

• have a curiosity about what goes on behind the scenes of American college football programs.

After a random encounter with an attorney, Erika Krouse gets hired by him to do P.I. work on one of his cases. Even though he had just met her, he told her things he hadn’t shared with anyone before. She just has one of those faces, where people feel like they know her and can use her as a receptacle for dumping their secrets and concerns. He knows immediately that as a private investigator, she’ll get all the beans/tea/guts to be spilled.

The case in question is the University of Colorado sexual assault and recruiting scandal circa 2004-2007. Krouse never mentions the college by name, and she gives pseudonyms to the people involved. (But thanks to google, I can play private investigator too!) Coaches supported recruiting high school players by wooing them with drugs and prostitutes. Players gang raped women because they felt entitled to do so. The university turned a blind eye to keep their Division 1 football cash cow humming along. GROSS!

Investigating the case was tricky for Krouse though, because she too is a survivor of abuse. Hers was of a familial nature, by a rapist in her own home (likely her step father, but again anonymity is used). In addition to the sexual abuse, her mother’s emotional and verbal abuse is astonishing. How someone can endure having such a P.O.S. as a mom and grow up to be a functioning adult is beyond me.

The text is so captivating that I never lost interest and sped through the audiobook in a day. (While not read by the author, narrator Gabra Zackman’s voice fits the tone well.) It’s clearly a tough story to hear at many points, and it should go without saying that victims of sexual assault may find the book either triggering or cathartic. I hope that since Erika Krouse is such an empathetic person it would be the latter. You feel like you’re spending time with an old friend. As it says right there in bold on the cover of the book, people do tell her everything.

My thanks to the author and Macmillan Audio for the gifted advance listening copy to review via NetGalley.

PUBLISHER SYNOPSIS:

Part memoir and part literary true crime, Tell Me Everything is the mesmerizing story of a landmark sexual assault investigation and the private investigator who helped crack it open.

Erika Krouse has one of those faces. “I don’t know why I’m telling you this,” people say, spilling confessions. In fall 2002, Krouse accepts a new contract job investigating lawsuits as a private investigator. The role seems perfect for her, but she quickly realizes she has no idea what she’s doing. Then a lawyer named Grayson assigns her to investigate a sexual assault, a college student who was attacked by football players and recruits at a party a year earlier. Krouse knows she should turn the assignment down; her own history with sexual violence makes it all too personal. But she takes the job anyway, inspired by Grayson’s conviction that he could help change things forever - and maybe she could, too.

Over the next five years, Krouse learns everything she can about P. I. technique, tracking down witnesses and investigating a culture of sexual assault and harassment ingrained in the university’s football program. But as the investigation grows into a national scandal and a historic civil rights case, she finds herself increasingly consumed. When the case and her life both implode at the same time, she must figure out how to help win the case without losing herself.