Tell Me Everything: The Story of a Private Investigation

Novelist Krouse’s (Come Up and See Me Sometime) first nonfiction work is an expert, nuanced blend of memoir and true crime. While working as a private investigator for a law firm, she found herself on a Big 12 university campus investigating a gang rape allegedly perpetrated by football players. The survivor of the attack had engaged Krouse’s firm to represent her, and the author began uncovering an institutional culture of violence that supported underage drinking and where school employees enlisted sex workers to provide services for athletes, all on the taxpayers’ dime. Grappling with her own trauma as a survivor of child sexual assault, Krouse dove into seeking witnesses for a civil suit that would establish legal precedent for providing Title IX protections to students who are sexually assaulted on campus; because the school was fostering a culture of discrimination and harassment, it risked losing its federal and state funding. 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.