Tell Me Everything: The Story of a Private Investigation
March 15, 2022, Flatiron Books, ISBN 1250240301 (ISBN13: 9781250240309)
Part memoir and part literary true crime, Tell Me Everything is the mesmerizing story of a landmark sexual assault investigation and the female private investigator who helped crack it open.
Erika Krouse has one of those faces. "I don't know why I'm telling you this," people say, spilling confessions. In fall 2002, Erika accepts a new contract job investigating lawsuits as a private investigator. The role seems perfect for her, but she quickly realizes she has no idea what she's doing. Then a lawyer named Grayson assigns her to investigate a sexual assault, a college student who was attacked by football players and recruits at a party a year earlier. Erika knows she should turn the assignment down. Her own history with sexual violence makes it all too personal. But she takes the job anyway inspired by Grayson's conviction that he could help change things forever. And maybe she could, too.
Over the next five years, Erika learns everything she can about P. I. technique, tracking down witnesses and investigating a culture of sexual assault and harassment ingrained in the university's football program. But as the investigation grows into a national scandal and a historic civil rights case, Erika finds herself increasingly consumed. When the case and her life both implode at the same time, Erika must figure out how to help win the case without losing herself.
Book of the Month Club, New York Times Editors’ Choice, People Magazine People Pick, BookPage Best Nonfiction of 2022, Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction of 2022, Slate 10 Best Books of 2022 (Laura Miller), Jezebel 10 Best Books of 2022.
Praise for Tell Me Everything:
“Masterful…Extraordinary…As gifted as she is at listening, Krouse is equally good at telling a story. There are many memorable characters in Tell Me Everything — from the plus-size sex worker to the beady-eyed coach to the incomparable Mr. Fixit that is JD — but it’s Krouse’s own persona, with her supernatural powers, her supersize wounds, and her spiritual speedball of courage and vulnerability, that makes this book mesmerizing on every page.”
—The Washington Post, Marion Winik
“[A] beautifully written, disturbing and affecting memoir. This is literary nonfiction at a high level…The book swirls around major sexual issues of our day — consent, college rape culture, institutional accountability — without ever feeling preachy or didactic…I found myself gasping at…the pain heightened by tenderness.”
—The New York Times Book Review, Patrick Hoffman
“Tell Me Everything is the best story I’ve read in a long, long time. Erika Krouse meticulously records her work as a private investigator in the multi-year investigation of one D1 college football team’s use of rape as a team-bonding experience and the support for this vile practice, which goes as high, perhaps, as the federal bench. While the incredible investigation unfolds, the reader watches Krouse address in parallel the silencing of the abuse she suffered as a very young girl. Each scene is a remarkable character study; each development is shocking. All of it is documented, which makes this magical book all the more remarkable. Told with incredible psychological insight and broad ethical attention, Tell Me Everything is an unstoppable inquiry that delivers justice for many and, finally, peace for the most deserving. That never happens in real life. Except in this case, it did. This book is beautiful, exhilarating, and wildly rewarding.”
—Lacy Crawford, author of Notes on a Silencing
“Erika Krouse’s Tell Me Everything is a reading event in the landscape of memoir unlike anything since Dave Eggers’s A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. It covers Krouse’s time as a private investigator and her deep and despairing dive into a culture of rape that’s rampant in big time college football. It’s a tale of detection, a mystery, a legal thriller, a whodunit, but it’s hardly escapist fare. A survivor herself, Krouse explores her own abuse deftly exploring the dynamics between the abused and their abusers. Krouse’s humor is on the dark side but this stuff is often so horrid and bleak you just want a referee to come in and blow a whistle. Ingenious in its approach to impossible subjects—silence, shame, forgiveness—while never forgetting the fierce hopes of the broken and abused, Krouse charts the triumph of even the tiniest steps in the direction of what it means to be okay in a hard world. It’s got something for everyone, even a hard won happy ending, of a sort. Krouse’s vivid and original memoir is state of the art. Tell Me Everything is our new standard.”
—Charles D’Ambrosio, author of Loitering
"I devoured Tell Me Everything over the course of two breathless days, harrowed and deeply moved by Erika Krouse's account of her time as a private investigator. It is at once a thrilling detective story—propulsive as anything by Raymond Chandler but with twice the emotional IQ, an exposé of the devastating culture of misogyny and violence within college football that scorchingly implicates our legal system, and a heart-rending narrative of family trauma and its long legacy. It is the most satisfying, urgent book I have read in a long time."
—Melissa Febos, author of Girlhood
“Erika Krouse’s remarkable Tell Me Everything affected me more than any memoir I’ve read in the last decade. Fueled by Krouse’s searching intelligence and studded with moments of subtle humor, this astonishing, prescient personal tale possesses the urgency of a great novel. Put simply: I loved it.”
—Joanna Rakoff, author of My Salinger Year
“Erika Krouse has a face that unlocks people’s secrets, but she also has an eye for memorable details, an ear for arresting language, a relentless self-awareness, and a mind that roves tirelessly through the tangled threads of a legal case that has cultural implications for us all. Tell Me Everything is gripping and moving, both excavation and investigation, of Krouse’s past and our collective present, and even of what future justice might look like.”
—Caitlin Horrocks, author of Life Among the Terranauts
“Erika Krouse achieves a singular accomplishment of voice in her stunning memoir Tell Me Everything. Her honesty, self-awareness and self-reflection combine to show a most trustworthy narrator – one who the reader wants to follow as she embarks as a P.I. on a multi-year investigation of sexual assault allegations at a Division One football team where “normal rules” do not appear to apply and the consequences are devastating. In this book, it’s not that truth is stranger than fiction but, at times, more outrageous and maddening as we feel the risk of engaging in the criminal justice system with powerful institutions and the impact on victims of sex crimes, as well as those trying to work in their best interest. This book asks us all to reckon with the questions, at what cost justice and at what cost injustice? It is a brilliant book and will be one I will be thinking about for a long time to come.”
—Michelle Bowdler, author of Is Rape a Crime? A Memoir, an Investigation, and a Manifesto
✶ “Novelist Krouse (Contenders) chronicles a benchmark sexual assault investigation in this enthralling blend of true crime and memoir. “I became a private investigator because of my face,” she writes, describing a chance meeting in 2002 that led her to take a job investigating lawsuits…When the scandal expanded into the “hidden world of athletic money,” the investigation escalated into a civil rights case accusing the school of a “system of sexual abuse” that “amount[ed] to discrimination,” and what began as a fight for one woman’s justice becomes a battle Krouse fights against her own inner demons that eloquently contends with systemic issues still plaguing American institutions today. The emotional catharsis delivered by the book’s end turns this sensational tale into a stunning story of redemption and hope. Readers will be gripped.”
—Publishers Weekly starred review
✶ “An inquiry into allegations of rape reveals a university’s complicity in fostering a dangerous sports subculture…The narrative that emerges is riveting and consistently insightful in its assessment of the psychodynamics of trauma for both victims and offenders; the valorization as well as the exploitation of male athletes; and the often volatile intersection of race, gender, and class in top-level college athletics. Rather than simply demonizing individuals, the author convincingly demonstrates how institutional practices have enabled (and covered up) predatory environments…The personal narrative, interwoven seamlessly alongside the professional one, is equally compelling. In explaining the toll her involvement in the case exacted on her, Krouse movingly documents her attempts to gain from her mother an acknowledgment of the abuse she endured as a child—and to make sense of their deeply troubled relationship. An exceptionally well-told, perceptive examination of a sexual abuse scandal and its personal and social relevance.”
—Kirkus starred review
✶ “Novelist Krouse’s (Come Up and See Me Sometime) first nonfiction work is an expert, nuanced blend of memoir and true crime… Though the campus, students, and staff are all kept anonymous in this book, characters are fully fleshed out, and Krouse deftly explores the complicated dynamics between the university, students, and college athletics. She seamlessly weaves elements of her own history into the narrative as she describes following leads, establishing a case, and fighting for justice. VERDICT: Readers will devour this searingly intimate tale of institutional misogyny. An important addition for all libraries.”
—Library Journal starred review, Mattie Cook
✶ “…Krouse explores both the legal case and her own emotional minefield in compelling, precise prose…With utmost care and consideration for the victims, some of whom chose not to come forward, Krouse gives readers a behind-the-scenes look at the complications of pursuing a Title IX case. Her narrative voice is engaging, and she effortlessly relates legal complexities in succinct, easy-to-follow passages. As a result, learning how Krouse and her legal team patiently unraveled the scope of the university’s involvement reads like a detective novel. Particularly riveting are the scenes in which Krouse speaks with various witnesses, often in bars or restaurants, trying to parse out what happened on the night of that ill-fated party…Both the true crime and memoir components of Krouse’s book are extremely successful, and her reflections on the injured party’s difficult choice to make their pain public are crisp and on point…Tell Me Everything is a memorable, highly personal account of a landmark legal case, as well as a thoughtful examination of the long-lasting damage of sexual assault.”
—BookPage starred review, Alice Cary. Click here for an interview!
“Splendid…This is a startlingly fresh book that proves the memoir can do much, much more than just describe, or pretend to describe, what really happened…Tell Me Everything isn’t a testimony of suffering. It’s the evidence of what Krouse has made from it: an artist, and a formidable one.”
—Slate, Laura Miller
“[An] unnerving, haunting book. It’s a triumph of literary reportage and memoir that doesn’t flinch at the ugliest truths—from others and herself.”
—Air Mail, Sarah Weinman
“…Krouse weaves these elements into a compelling account as she describes building the case, including empathetic profiles of the individuals involved, and shares her struggles with past and present trauma. Krouse's brutal candor and perceptive insights make for powerful storytelling.
—Booklist, Kathleen McBroom
“An engrossing memoir…[Krouse’s] personal account reads like addictive true crime, and the emotional ending makes this an unforgettable read.”
―Real Simple
“Krouse’s Tell Me Everything is a beautiful piece of prose about some very ugly things. It’s reflective and incisive in all the right ways, the ways you’d want them to be were you at a bar sharing some appetizers and drinking a couple of beers with an acquaintance to whom you’re spilling your guts just because she has that kind of face.”
—Westword, Teague Bohlen
“The buzz for fiction writer Krouse’s debut memoir is so thick, the air around it feels static-charged. Lacy Crawford, author of Notes on a Silencing, said about it, “I am reading a forthcoming book right now that—if there is any justice (I know, I know)—will dismantle for good the racist, misogynist, capitalist concussionpalooza that is D1 college football.” Melissa Febos called it “a real life feminist noir detective story. Very intense & beautifully crafted. It’s out in March and I can’t recommend it highly enough.” ... In Krouse’s capable hands, the story reads like an elevated detective novel, full of personal intrigue and doled out with enviable control. It is not to be missed.”
—BookPage, 2022 Preview: Most Anticipated Nonfiction
“Krouse tells the story with fierce outrage for the victims and a wry, self-deprecating wit when it comes to her own skills. This book fills the hole left in my heart by the end of Lie to Me.”
—CrimeReads, The Most Anticipated Crime Fiction of 2022
“With Tell Me Everything, Krouse figures out a whole new way to do what good writing does: She makes the personal universal and vice versa.”
—Jezebel, Rich Juzwiak
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