THE SPIDER AND THE FLY

BY CLAUDIA ROWE Warning: This true-crime memoir is INTENSE—as in “take breaks and palate cleanse with a Hallmark movie” levels of unrelenting grimness. This story of one woman’s obsession with a spate of murders in Poughkeepsie, N.Y.—and her subsequent correspondence with the man convicted of killing those women—is terrifyingly good, even if it does take a deep dive into the ugliest corners of the human experience.