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Tell Me Everything: The Story of a Private Investigation
An arresting blend of memoir and true crime about a landmark sexual assault case. “I became a private investigator because of my face,” Krouse writes. No matter where she goes or who she meets, perfect strangers tell her things they’ve never told anyone else. To her great surprise, this inconvenience turns into a job offer when a local attorney hires her as a PI to investigate cases for his firm. When the attorney takes on a new client who was sexually assaulted by college football recruits, he sets an audacious goal: he wants to prove the school was not only aware of but complicit in the program’s culture of violence. The prospect of securing justice and making the perpetrators pay compels Krouse to take the case, despite her own history of sexual abuse. As the lawsuit—and the story—move forward, her past trauma and its present repercussions nestle up alongside the investigation in the narrative, to great effect, and build to a stirring, stunning, and gently hopeful ending. A painful yet purposeful book, beautifully executed, utterly unputdownable. For fans of Chanel Miller’s Know My Name, with interesting parallels to Dolen Perkins-Valdez’s Take My Hand.
About the Book
“The best story I’ve read in a long, long time.” —Lacy Crawford, author of Notes on a Silencing
“Krouse’s vivid and original memoir is state of the art. Tell Me Everything is our new standard.” —Charles D’Ambrosio, author of Loitering
Part memoir and part literary true crime, Tell Me Everything is the mesmerizing story of a landmark sexual assault investigation and the female 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, Erika 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. Erika 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, Erika 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, Erika finds herself increasingly consumed. When the case and her life both implode at the same time, Erika must figure out how to help win the case without losing herself.
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