When the Night Comes Falling: A Requiem for the Idaho Student Murders

by Howard Blum

Overview

The definitive, inside story of the Idaho murders from bestselling author Howard Blum, whose groundbreaking coverage of the story was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.

Timed for a trial that will capture national attention, When the Night Comes Falling examines the mysterious murders of the four University of Idaho students. Having covered this case from its start, Edgar award winning investigative reporter Howard Blum takes readers behind the scenes of the police manhunt that eventually led to suspected killer, Bryan Christopher Kohberger, and uncovered larger, lurid questions within this unthinkable tragedy.

Reminiscent of the panoramic portraiture of In Cold Blood and The Executioner’s Song, When the Night Comes Falling  offers a suspenseful, richly detailed narrative that will have readers transfixed.  

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780063349308
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	06/25/2024
Sold by:	HARPERCOLLINS
Format:	eBook
Pages:	240
Sales rank:	53
File size:	5 MB

About the Author

Howard Blum is the author of the New York Times bestseller and Edgar Award–winner American Lightning, as well as Wanted!, The Gold of Exodus, Gangland, The Floor of Heaven, In the Enemy's House, and most recently, The Spy Who Knew Too Much. Blum is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair. While at the New York Times, he was twice nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting. He is the father of three children, and lives in Connecticut. 

Editorial Reviews

"Blum capably maintains the suspense and thoughtfully probes into the motives of key players in this intriguing yet profoundly unsettling story. A compelling true-crime book." — Kirkus Reviews

“Howard Blum writes history books that read like thrillers.” — New York Times

“Blum has a remarkable talent for both uncovering history’s most inexplicably forgotten stories . . . and for writing nonfiction like a big-budget thriller.” — Daily Beast

"By going back and forth in time, Blum cleverly makes his pieces part of agency folklore, terrific stories in their own right. . . . Blum lays out his pieces clearly, and entertainingly." — Washington Post on The Spy Who Knew Too Much

From the Publisher

2024-04-30
The prolific nonfiction author returns with the story behind the 2022 slayings of four University of Idaho students.

Blum, author of Night of the Assassins, Dark Invasion, and other bestselling books, characterizes Moscow, Idaho, as a “quaint” and “churchy” town that also happened to be home to a university known for being “the best party school in the state.” Beneath the pleasant exterior, a disturbing history—which included drug trafficking, brutal murders, and allegations of pedophilia and sexual assault against respected members of a local church—quietly lurked. Blum reveals how the stabbing deaths of Kaylee Goncalves, Maddie Mogen, Xana Kernodle, and Ethan Chapin on November 13, 2022, revealed, in their shocking senselessness, Moscow’s unacknowledged dark side. The police investigation ultimately yielded a suspect, a troubled criminology doctorate student named Bryan Kohberger, and circumstantial evidence pointed to Kohberger’s guilt. However, there were no significant connections between the indicted killer and any of the victims, which has since led to multiple postponements of the trial: “And so now after all the tedious, exasperating delays, whenever it finally does take place, it will be a footnote to the larger, ineluctable events….Besides, what will the trial reveal? The dialectics of the courtroom would inevitably prevail and opposing teams of experts will be summoned to go at one another.” Blum suggests that a second tragedy—the effect the murders have had on victims’ families—exists alongside the actual murders themselves. In their frustration with the criminal system and desire for justice, Goncalves’ parents and siblings offered support for death penalty legislation that would permit death by a firing squad, effectively making them victims of a “raging, all-consuming anger” that would mark them for life. Blum capably maintains the suspense and thoughtfully probes into the motives of key players in this intriguing yet profoundly unsettling story.

A compelling true-crime book.

Kirkus Reviews