The story of Rebecca Zahau is one that is still talked about ten years after her death and Caitlin Rother wrote a fantastic retelling of the murder and the investigation that followed. As someone who listens to a lot of true crime podcasts has never actually read a true crime novel, this was my first.
The retelling of this story is one that has a lot of tragedy in it, Caitlin Rother does a fantastic job at making sure all the details are there and it is not persuaded one way or the other. In some way she lets the reader come to their own conclusion.
This book follows the death of Rebecca Zahau in 2011 in Coronado California. Caitlin Rother has followed this case since it happened from the start. Rebecca Zahau died a few days after a tragic accident of her boyfriend’s son Max. She was found hanging outside the vacation home in California. What seems like a clear-cut case of suicide is much more complexed than it seems. Rother follows the case for years and has documents from the police department and follows through with even going to the court trial that comes from it.
Rother has interviews with the people involved including the police officers that were on the case. She makes sure that there is all sides told and does not keep it one-sided. She makes sure that even though there are a lot of conspiracies out there and a lot of web sleuths trying to solve this case, Rother makes sure that she brings them up but that do not dominate the main theories of, was she murdered? Or, was she so depressed she committed suicide?
What pulled me into this book is that it followed the last ten years and up to the present-day fight that is going on. It is also the fact that there are many different components to this case that I had no idea about and this book gave all those views.
If looking for a serious true crime read of an unpredictable case, Death of Ocean Boulevard may be a read for you.
Thank you Kensington Books and Netgalley for giving me the opportunity to read this book early.
This book will be released on April 27.
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