“A gutting page-turner, an investigative trick mirror, a blazing book in a category all its own. When Kate Crane's dad vanished in 1987 — suspicious as hell — she became obsessed with questions that defy answers. This search narrative excavates the slippage between fact and feeling, between memory and wishful thinking, between the spectral father who haunts her (and a famous TV writer), potential suspects, and all the pain she's metabolized since he vanished. Set in storied Baltimore and New York City during Y2K — Heavens to Betsy on cassette, the millennium's end reflecting her own temporal vertigo — this genre-warping book is equal parts memoir and survival manifesto, an incisive debate about True Crime, and a love letter to Gen X tactility (photographs, posters, Xerox, actual cameras). Blazing through decades of absence, Crane constructs a palimpsest of the disappeared while mapping her own missing pieces. The result is a propulsive, gripping quest — a mind-bending study of what it means to inherit mystery, to *live* mystery. This daring book catalyzes a new conversation about crime, storytelling and closure in a grief-denying culture. I will never forget What Ever Happened to Eddy Crane? — and neither will you.”
—Margot Douaihy, USA Today bestselling author of Scorched Grace
“A life well lived does not always make for a story well told. But Kate Crane's engrossing memoir has both. The death of her father, a steady drumbeat that haunts her youth, propels this book, but it is her life—her heart and mind—that keep us turning pages. This book is everything a reader could want. It will crack your whole heart open.” “An unforgettable elegy for a city and a family, and a clear-eyed exploration of a case that haunted the Baltimore Police Department for decades. Not to be missed.” “Both heartfelt and heartbreaking, Crane's story is, and remains, a tragic one. But in gathering the courage to recount her search for her father's murderer, she transforms it into a tale of unexpected strength and redemption. An instruction manual for the building of a soul.” “A PTSD memoir and cold case mystery rolled into one—and the mystery in this case is intractable. Crane offers the reader a hard journey, but it's a trip well worth taking.” |
Out April 2026
Available for preorder... HarperCollins Barnes and Noble Bookshop.org Amazon Books-A-Million A dazzlingly crafted, page-turning blend of memoir and true crime that calls to mind David Carr’s The Night of the Gun, Michael Hainey’s After Visiting Friends, and Becky Cooper’s We Keep the Dead Close.
One night in 1987, Eddy Crane called to say he was on his way home from his trucking business in industrial Baltimore. He never showed up. Kate, 12 years old and a new eighth grader, felt certain he was dead. She and her family were shocked and adrift, with no explanation or resolution on the horizon. 20 years later, now a journalist in NYC, Kate is determined to seek answers. She works with Baltimore’s Cold Case Unit, tracks down the retired detectives who’d worked Eddy’s case, and chases leads with old friends through her hometown’s dark alleys. Part memoir, part true crime, part suspense, Whatever Happened to Eddy Crane? is a brilliantly written, deeply felt account of unfathomable loss and blazing resilience, of Baltimore, of family ghosts, and the bravery required to confront the past. “An incredible book. The quality of the writing, the precise observations of place and person, the solitary intelligence and immediacy of description all transcend genre. I admire this memoir as an act of reconstruction and of personal recovery.” “This is no mere memoir, but instead a daughter's campaign to wrestle ghosts that have long haunted, and, in the end, to reclaim what she can of a lost father. Having reported on that man's disappearance and the thwarted police investigation that ensued, I've been a bystander as Kate Crane, a young child when we first met, embarked on and endured a solitary journey of both memory and self-discovery, stirring the embers of a cold case that everyone else was willing to forget. She would not forget. And this beautifully crafted, deeply felt narrative is the result. Eddy Crane is now truly remembered.” |
