Spider and the Fly

Winner of the Washington State Book Award for MemoirExtraordinarily suspenseful and truly gut-wrenching. . . . A must-read.Gillian Flynn, author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Gone GirlIn this superb work of literary true crimea spellbinding combination of memoir and psychological suspensea female journalist chronicles her unusual connection with a convicted serial killer and her search to understand the darkness inside us.'Well, well, Claudia. Can I call you Claudia? Ill have to give it to you, when confronted at least youre honest, as honest as any reporter. . . . You want to go into the depths of my mind and into my past. I want a peek into yours. It is only fair, isnt it?'Kendall FrancoisIn September 1998, young reporter Claudia Rowe was working as a stringer for the New York Times in Poughkeepsie, New York, when local police discovered the bodies of eight women stashed in the attic and basement of the small colonial home that Kendall Francois, a painfully polite twenty-seven-year-old community college student, shared with his parents and sister.Growing up amid the safe, bourgeois affluence of New York City, Rowe had always been secretly fascinated by the darkness, and soon became obsessed with the story and with Francois. She was consumed with the desire to understand just how a man could abduct and strangle eight womenand how a family could live for two years, seemingly unaware, in a house with the victims rotting corpses. She also hoped to uncover what humanity, if any, a murderer could maintain in the wake of such monstrous evil. Reaching out after Francois was arrested, Rowe and the serial killer began a dizzying four-year conversation about cruelty, compassion, and control; an unusual and provocative relationship that would eventually lead her to the abyss, forcing her to clearly see herself and her own pastand why she was drawn to danger.