After Etan

As my babysitter is home from boot camp, hip hip hurrah, I turn to a pile of books and emails that have built up over the last of summer. I look forward to catching up and sharing news of the latest top-shelf stuff in the true crime genre.

One recent book that impressed me is first-time author and former 60 Minutes producer Lisa Cohen’s story of a missing child case you probably remember. We know his picture on sight, though it took thirty years for anyone to write a book about a case that has changed so much about American society. It’s After Etan: The Missing Child Case that Held America Captive [Amazon; B&N], published by Hachette Book Group. This book caught my attention when it was favorably reviewed by Janet Maslin in the New York Times. (For a true crime book, let alone an historical true crime book, a positive review in the Times an incredibly impressive feat, one that has eluded the most famous true crime authors alive today.) And that's just one of many favorable reviews.

Etan Patz disappeared in May 1979 while walking to school in SoHo, Manhattan. He was six. The case has since been the subject of a blizzard of publicity that really has yet to abate. His disappearance coincided with the disappearance of Adam Walsh and a dramatic change in the treatment of missing children cases. The two cases even overlap. As this book explains, Etan Patz’s mother was with Adam Walsh’s mother when the news came that Adam Walsh’s remains had been found.

That was not the outcome for the Patz family. Though Etan Patz's face is familiar to many even today, his disappearance proved “an enigma, with its crazy patchwork of leads and long list of amorphous suspects.” But a Pied Piper figure, a man who was described as Charles Manson meets Mr. Rogers, emerged as the chief suspect.

It has been called every parent’s worst nightmare and it certainly is my worst nightmare. My sons are six and three. The mere thought that someone would snuff out their lives and destroy mine in the process, for a mere sexual thrill.... So I really didn’t know what I was in for when I picked up this book. Would it be a horrifying, gut-wrenching book that would leave me in a puddle? Would it be a story I would abandon, or would regret reading?

Not at all. Author Cohen’s careful, factual, well researched, very tightly written rendition of Etan Patz's disappearance and the painstaking, decades-long efforts to find him carried me through the story. Much of the book follows the prosecutor who tried to get justice for Etan and his family. The last two-thirds of it read like a John Grisham legal thriller, only well written, and with enough weird characters for eight Grisham books.

The author’s clear and simple explanations of complex legal maneuvers fascinated and impressed me. And the actions of that prosecutor - Stuart GraBois - had me cheering and provided a much-needed elevation of my opinions of prosecutors generally.

The author has a website devoted to the book. She is also blogging now on Women in Crime Ink. I'll have to keep tabs on an author who can earn such reviews and craft such an impressive book.