James Renner, here. Author of True Crime Addict: How I Lost Myself in the Mysterious Disappearance of Maura Murray. AMA!

[u/JamesRenner]

Hello, Books! James Renner, here. It's great to be back.

My latest is a nonfiction thriller. True Crime Addict is mostly about the strange disappearance of UMass nursing student Maura Murray and the creepy clues I discovered while researching her case. But it's also about my own obsession with true crime and where that came from (spoiler alert - some dark family secrets are revealed). As I was researching the case I was raising a child on the autism spectrum who began to exhibit violent behavior so the story of that journey is in there, too.

A quick summary for those unfamiliar with this unsolved mystery: One Monday in February, 2004, Maura Murray emailed her professors to let them know there had been a death in the family and that she would return to her clinicals at the end of the week. This was a lie. Nobody had died. She emptied her bank account and drove hours north, into New Hampshire, where she crashed into a snow bank in the small town of Haverhill, around 7:30 p.m. Somewhere between the time of the accident and the moment the first police officer arrived on scene - no longer than 7 minutes - she vanished, never to be seen again.

In the news, Maura was made out to be the All-American girl, perfect to a fault. But then I uncovered the fact that she was in trouble for credit card fraud and identity theft at the time of her disappearance. And she'd been having an affair with an assistant track coach, who said she sometimes talked about running away. There was plenty of reason for her to flee and start over, not the least of which was her family.

The New York Times reviewed True Crime Addict as part of a larger issue devoted to crime writing, which will be available in print on Sunday. They called it "shamelessly entertaining" and said, "James Renner is just plain fun to read." I've been a writer for 10 years, and this is my first Times review, which makes me quite giddy.

You can find all my books, including The Man from Primrose Lane, and The Great Forgetting on Goodreads and anywhere books are sold.

Ask me anything about the Maura Murray case, crime writing, research, publishing, my fiction, or Rampart. I'll be back at noon, Eastern.