A Cold Case

By Belinda Luscombe

The author of the best-titled book of the '90s (We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families: Stories from Rwanda) has taken on another grim reconstruction: a 27-year-old murder. No car-chase thrills here, merely the gathering of string, knotted together to lasso the perpetrator, who is the guy everyone thought it was all along. Gourevitch is more interested in context, argot and character than plot. The book is the better for it.

--By Belinda Luscombe