One of the most frustrating aspects of our culture’s obsession with true crime is the tendency of writers, directors, podcasters, etc. to put all their focus on the criminal, lionizing him (it’s always a Him) as if his crimes showcase his intelligence instead of his depravity. That’s ever-so-slowly starting to change. Your Own Backyard does an incredible job focusing on Kristin Smart and the impact her disappearance made on her friends and family, and when it discusses Paul Flores it contextualizes him as the misogynist rapist creep that he is, who got away with so much because police just don’t like to believe women. Bright Young Women, the third novel by Jessica Knolls, does the same thing. It takes a real serial killer – referred to in this novel only as The Defendant – but puts the focus on the women he targeted, and the friends and family they left behind.
Bright Young Women is told through the eyes of Pamela and Ruth. Pamela is the chapter president of the sorority that was targeted by the defendant, and she is the only eyewitness that can place him at the scene. Ruth was one of two women who disappeared from Lake Sammamish four years prior, and her partner Tina is convinced that she is another one of the defendant’s victims. The story jumps back and forth in time. For Pamela, the story progresses from that terrible night into the aftermath; the investigation, the final murder committed by the defendant, his capture, and the trial. It also jumps forward into the present, where Pamela is trying to discover something, though we don’t discover her goal until far later in the book. For Ruth, her story marches inexorably toward her death, but also explores her life. Her complicated grief over the death of her father, her fractured relationship with the rest of her family, her sexuality, and her relationship with Tina. Ruth’s ending is heartbreaking because we spend so much time with her, and while the defendant was responsible for ending her life, he was not the most important part of it – she was.
Overall, the story is a condemnation of the misogynist society that demeans victims and lavishes praise on the perpetrators. Much like the actual killer, the press in Bright Young Women fawn over the defendant, praising his looks (mediocre), his intelligence (lacking), and his legal savvy (nonexistent). My favorite parts of the story are when Pamela tears down the myths built up by the press and reveals him for what he is: a violent, hateful man who expected women to take care of him forever, and targeted women who – through their own exceptional selves – made him face his own inferiority.
“Law enforcement would rather we remember a dull man as brilliant than take a good hard look at the role they played in this absolute sideshow, and I am sick to death of watching them in their pressed shirts and cowboy boots, in their comfortable leather interview chairs, in hugely successful and critically acclaimed crime documentaries, talking about the intelligence and charm and wiliness of an ordinary misogynist. This story is not that. The story is not that.”
― Bright Young Women