You Want to Learn More about Bellingcat

Love magic and mystery or are ready to cry

Hi friends,

Hope your day is off to a good start.

I’m interviewing Julia Whelan, author of Thank You For Listening and audiobook narrator extraordinaire, tomorrow. If you have questions you’d like me to ask her, leave a comment.

And, now, what to read if …

You’re Wondering Who — or What — Bellingcat Is

We Are Bellingcat by Eliot Higgins

Bellingcat, an online sleuthing group, earned headlines again last week for its role in identifying Jack Teixeira, the 21-year-old who allegedly leaked classified Pentagon documents. It’s an organization made up of researchers, investigators and citizen journalists who use openly available information on the internet to report on everything from the downing of flight MH17 over Ukraine in 2014 to police violence in Colombia. The group’s founder, Eliot Higgins, documents Bellingcat’s rise and introduces readers to the tools the organization relies on for its exposés in his book We Are Bellingcat.

In 2011, Higgins, working an office job in Leicester, England, became fascinated by news coming out of the Middle East. He spent hours poring over message boards, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and Tumblr, attempting to learn as much as he could from people reporting their experiences on the ground. One morning, he found sources claiming two opposing groups — the Libyan government and rebel insurgents — both said they controlled the same town. Using videos and Google Maps, he proved both groups were partially correct.

“Seated in my office in Middle England, I had clarified the front line of a war zone thousands of miles away. All I had needed was a YouTube clip and Google Maps,” he writes in We Are Bellingcat.

It’s a fascinating read for anyone interested in citizen journalism and how the web is changing the way we find and process information. It also feels like a spy thriller, at times taking us into the organization’s investigations of Bashar al-Assad's use of chemical weapons in Syria and the poisoning of a Russian spy living in England.

You Love a Mystery — or Magic

Death and The Conjuror by Tom Mead

If you’ve been reading this newsletter for a bit, you might remember that I got into watching magic videos on YouTube after reading Gigi Pandian’s Under Lock and Skeleton Key. You also probably know I love mysteries. I dove into the intersection of stage magic, mysteries and misdirection in a recent essay for CrimeReads.

If you’re intrigued, check out Death and The Conjuror, the first book in a new mystery series from Tom Mead, starring Joseph Spector, a retired stage magician. In it, the police turn to Joseph to help solve a seemingly impossible crime: the murder of a celebrity psychiatrist in his locked office. There are no witnesses, no clues and, most confoundingly, no way a culprit could have escaped. The illusionist — used to dealing with the impossible — sets out to solve the crime.

Magic fans will find a lot to love about this one, but so will readers of Golden Age Mysteries. It has the style and feel of stories from John Dickson Carr and Clayton Rawson. Mead even embraces the old-school tactic of telling readers when they have all the clues to solve the crime and challenging them to lay out a solution. I did not get it — but maybe you will.

You Need an Excuse to Call an Old Friend

Stay True by Hua Hsu

I guessed before I started it that Stay True would make my cry. I was right. It’s a searing nostalgia-soaked memoir of friendship and grief that made me call and text my friends to tell them I love them.

Hua Hsu, a staff writer for the New Yorker, met Ken when he was 18 and quickly determined his new acquaintance was everything he wasn’t. Hsu, the son of Taiwanese immigrants, dressed exclusively in thrift shop threads, made a zine and spent hours searching for obscure finds in Bay Area record stores. Ken, in contrast, was a Dave-Matthews-Band-loving frat boy. Still, over late-night cigarettes and long drives, they developed a deep friendship that lasted until Ken was tragically killed in a carjacking. Even knowing the premise of the book, I still felt gut punched when Hsu described Ken’s death.

Stay True is a tender and gripping coming-of-age story about growing up and leaving behind your younger self. It made me sentimental for my own college years — nearly two decades after Hsu’s — and a time when it felt like I had nothing but time.

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That’s it for me this week. Thanks, as always, for letting me in your inbox.

What to Read If is a free weekly book recommendation newsletter. Need a rec? Want to gush about a book? Reply to this email, leave a comment or find me on Twitter @elizabethheld.

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