Robert Kolker is a New York magazine contributing editor and was a finalist for the National Magazine Award. He writes about issues surrounding criminal justice and the unforeseen impact of extraordinary events on everyday people. He lives with his family in Brooklyn. This is his first book.
“Kolker is a careful writer and researcher...[he paints] a
far more nuanced picture of each young woman than any screaming
headline could.” — Miami Herald
“Through extensive interviews with the victims’ families
and friends, Kolker creates compassionate portraits of the murdered
young women, and uncovers the forces that drove them from their
respective home towns into risky, but lucrative, careers as
prostitutes in a digital age.” — New Yorker
“Captivating.” — Boston Globe
“Robert Kolker unflinchingly probes the 21st-century
innovations that facilitated these crimes… ...An important
examination of the socioeconomic and cultural forces that can shape
a woman’s entry into prostitution.” — Kirkus Reviews
“Beautifully and provocatively written.... [Lost Girls]
will make all but the hardest-hearted empathetic. Add a baffling
whodunit that remains, as the subtitle indicates, unsolved, and you
have a captivating true crime narrative that’s sure to win new
converts and please longtime fans of the genre.” — Publishers
Weekly (starred review)
“Robert Kolker’s LOST GIRLS is reportage at the highest level; it’s
miss-your-bedtime storytelling… It’s a wonder.” — Darin Strauss,
author of Half A Life
“Lost Girls is a marvelous book, taking a complicated,
trying story and making it compulsively readable. Kolker is an
outstanding reporter and a sensitive narrator who does justice to a
horrible tragedy by paying exactly the kind of attention that no
one else did, or would.” — Nick Reding, author of Methland
“The absence of the killer is the making of this book, a
constraint that allows it to become extraordinary…humane and
imaginative…[Kolker] shows the dented magnificence and universal
sorrow within ordinary lives, and makes you realize how much more
they are worth.” — Laura Miller, Salon
“Kolker indulges in zero preaching and very little
sociology; his is the lens of a classic police reporter. And often
in Lost Girls, the facts are eloquent in themselves.” — Newsday
“Some true crime books are exploitative…others grasp at
serious literature. Robert Kolker’s new book falls into the latter
category.” — New York Observer
“Readers expecting an SVU-style true-crime story will be
disappointed. But through detailed profiles of the victims
themselves, Kolker has written a more provocative book—a book that
is as much about class and economic pressures as it is about sex
work and murder.” — The Daily Beast
“Meticulously reported and beautifully written, Robert Kolker’s
Lost Girls is a haunting and powerful crime story that gives voice
to those who can no longer be heard. It is a story that you will
not be able to forget.” — David Grann, author of Killers of the
Flower Moon
“A gothic whodunit for the Internet age…nearly unputdownable…[LOST
GIRLS is] a horrific, cautionary tale that makes for a very
different kind of beach read…Kolker expertly chronicles the sad
cycle of poor, uneducated white women faced with lots of kids and
few resources.” — Mimi Swartz, New York Times Book Review
“Rich, tragic...monumental...true-crime reporting at its best.” —
Washington Post
“Engrossing...a car-crash of a book...By humanizing the women, Mr.
Kolker has produced a subtle indictment of the sex trade.” — Nina
Burleigh, New York Observer
“A heart-chilling non-fiction tour-de-force...terrifying and
intensely reported.” — Complex Magazine
“A rare gem of a book that not only tells a riveting story but
illuminates something about a slice of America and gets into a lot
of very deep issues. Its really great on every front.” — Slate,
DoubleX
“Riveting and often heartbreaking...a lashing critique of how
society, and the police, let these young women down.” — New York
Times
“Immensely evocative...we are left with is a visceral
understanding of the lives of the victims and why they should have
mattered more.” — New York Daily News
“Terrific...vivid and moving...Grade: A-” — Entertainment
Weekly
“So masterful.” — Megan Abbott, author of Dare Me , via Twitter
“By learning the intimate details of the women’s lives, seeing them
as humans rather than victims, we see our similarities…Lost Girls
is possibly the realest, fullest picture of what is happening with
sex work in the US right now.” — The Guardian (UK)
“Kolker does not hold back in addressing the fact that there was
dysfunction in these women’s lives. They were drug addicts and
teenage mothers and petty criminals. They suffered. But he can also
see that within those circumstances they had moments of strength
and self-assurance. ” — Barnes & Noble Review
“Lost Girls is partly unsolved mystery...[partly]the intimate story
of the five women… [and] a case study in the profound impact of the
Internet, and particularly Craigslist, on the business of buying
and selling sex.” — National Post (Canada)
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