2023 might be the year we have a good think about the role of the True Crime podcast. Last year, they were a huge trend in the books I enjoyed, but from a lighthearted stance – exploring the form and format. This year, Rebecca Makkai has brought the genre to a darker, more thoughtful space with I Have Some Questions For You, which will be released February 21, 2023 in the US. (Thanks to NetGalley and Viking for the gift copy.)

I Have Some Questions For You tells the story of Bodie Kane, an alumna of the elite Granby boarding school in New Hampshire. Now a famous podcaster and sometimes-professor, she returns to the school to teach a “mini-mester” course on podcasting. But her return (and her students’ interest) digs up a 30-year-old cold case, the surprising murder of a beautiful senior. As they dig deeper, Bodie uncovers old secrets and grapples with her own past, all in the pursuit of justice – or maybe just Curiosity?

It’s a compelling setup, one that promises all sorts of thought-provoking questions about the trend in True Crime and its intersections with identity. (In fact, I was so excited about this that I’m interrupting our Regularly Scheduled Programming to make sure y’all can read it ahead of book launch!) And this has been hugely hyped in the Crime reading community this year. But can it live up to expectations?

A high-school cold case…

In many ways, I Have Some Questions For You reminds of the YA murder mystery Truly Devious. Both involve a cold case that takes place at New England boarding school. Both involve intrepid high-school students who choose to investigate their campus for a podcast. But where Truly Devious centers students, exploring a crime long past, Makkai centers those involved in the case, now adults.

This distinction makes a world of difference. While Makkai’s protagonist, Bodie, often reflects on heady teenage feelings, she’s very much an adult with knowledge of the world. She can reflect on a 20+-year-old crime in the headspace of both an adult and a teenager, seamlessly bouncing between the two perspectives. Bodie’s narration makes clear how formative teenage years can be to adult personality, especially in the stories we tell ourselves.

Makkai’s made a clever choice here – by plunging an adult narrator back into a high school environment, she gets to reference teenage angst while incorporating a more mature perspective. Bodie’s narration is entirely addressed to a single, unsettling suspect – an adult she suspects of undue involvement in the murder. As she teases out her memories, she struggles (very relatable) to disentangle her teenage perspective with her more adult understanding of what may have happened. Was this suspect a supportive campus adult or a “creeper”? And what would that mean for her relationship with him, and with the victim?

We watch Bodie go through this complex reformulation again and again, in reference to this adult but also all her classmates. While many true crime stories involve this kind of reinvention, it’s rare to see it happen so directly. It’s a thought-provoking way to break down and explore the components of identity and knowledge firsthand.

…that evolves from a True Crime Podcast…

I Have Some Questions For You is a novel with Opinions. Opinions on true crime, on patriarchy, on race, and on reparations. It’s stuffed to the gills with Social Thoughts, from the frame of a boarding school podcast class.

We can start with True Crime as a genre. Bodie herself is a podcaster who explores true crime-adjacent topics; this is what gets her enough fame and success to return to Granby. Britt, her student, struggles with the implications of her identity as a white woman interested in a crime where the state accused a black man. Then there are the constant references to other True Crime media interested in Thalia’s case – from the YouTube investigator, to imitator podcasts that pick up the case.

Makkai doesn’t land definitively on side of the fence when it comes to the True Crime ecosystem. Each of the investigations is complex, with elements both problematic and meritorious. The students are a bit hasty in their early production, jumping to conclusions without sufficient evidence. Because Bodie influences their investigations, it’s safe to say they’re not exactly impartial in their conclusions, either. And the Internet riffraff cause an undue stir without making any meaningful progress, re-examining tiny details in the hopes of uncovering something dramatic. In the end, it takes Bodie and other former students to drive any new revelations.

And yet. Without the podcasts, without the YouTubers, without the Redditors – would Bodie have ever dug through the past? Without the Internet horde keeping Thalia’s memory alive, it’s not clear that the events in the novel could have reasonably come to pass. Still, Makkai makes sure to show how much pain the investigation can cause – not just to Thalia’s family, but to other involved parties. I Have Some Questions For You asks: is the entertainment worth it?

…to a reflection on societal power

Makkai’s got bigger fish to fry than true crime podcasts alone. Instead, over the course of the novel, she breaks down the myriad ways patriarchy hurts women. It starts with the lists of crimes perpetuated against women, by men, served up by the new media for entertainment. Then there’s the haunting narration, targeted at an unsettling adult man from Bodie’s days at Granby.

But the novel also explores the small things, the more subtle things. How Bodie’s husband requires long-distance management for child care instructions. How casually teenage boys can exert social power over female classmates via unfounded rumors. And how women are taught, even as teenagers, to compete for male attention.

If that’s not enough of a feminist bent for you – Makkai uses the case to explore race and justice as well. The original suspect in the murder case is black, and the book gets to explore how convenient his presence was to the State Police at the time. While Bodie may need convincing to upend her status quo beliefs about the case, as a reader his innocence is a foregone conclusion. The real question, then, is whether Internet Investigations are enough to free him – and whether that would even be sufficient.

I Have Some Questions For You forces the reader to engage with these questions. How much trouble is the truth worth? How much pain? And how well do legal systems, past and present, uphold our ideals of Justice For All?

Reader’s notes & rating (⭐⭐⭐⭐)

I Have Some Questions For You is a thought-provoking look at crime and society, framed by the True Crime podcast boom. The writing is haunting and evocative and deeply sad; it forces engagement with hard questions. If it aligns with your Politics, it will almost certainly be both engaging and compelling (if not fun).

Why four stars then, and not five? That’s a pretty big conditional for me – it’s hard to imagine someone who’s not deeply interested in the questions posited by the novel appreciating this read. I found only parts of this premise well-realized: the personal stories were better told than the broader reflections on society (perhaps why they stuck out to me so). There are also elements of Bodie’s backstory that felt unbelievably terrible, that jerked me out of the story when I hit them. They die down over the course of the novel, but it’s the kind of thing that makes it just that much harder to engage. Still, a great read if not a Great one – four stars, definitely one to pick up for a fan of crime writing.

I Have Some Questions For You will be published on February 21, 2023.