The Book of Cold Cases

In The Book of Cold Cases, St. James uses Beth’s story, ranging from 1960 to 2017, to illustrate societal perceptions of women in America in the past, and compare them to attitudes in the present. She explores the feminine ideal of the past, which portrayed women as kind, nurturing, emotional, and serving as support to the men in their lives. St. James understands that it might be difficult for a modern reader to fully understand exactly how restrictive and misogynistic these feminine ideals of American culture were. By taking the reader back in time, St. James manages to convey the difficulties Beth and other women faced socially, and even though Beth was in a position of relative privilege due to her wealth and beauty, those privileges came with their own disadvantages, such as a distinct lack of compassion for her personal tragedies. As Mariana says, “‘Are you bitter or are you sweet?” (162). St. James reinforces this idea with society’s treatment of Beth, who once she failed to fit the feminine ideal was deemed “bitter” and shunned.

Beth briefly and succinctly sums up the attitude of the police toward her during the Lady Killer investigation: “‘I had tits and an ass, so I wasn’t a real person'” (61). The police treat her differently as a woman than they might have otherwise, another fact that Beth sees clearly, identifying the double standard that exists in our society: “‘The cops, too—they all thought the fact that I drank and partied meant I was evil. If I were a man, they would have had sympathy. They probably would’ve joined me” (61). This condemnation of Beth extends to every aspect of her life, and, as she notes, society attributes the worst motivations to her actions. For example, Beth “was thought to be an improper young lady, because she couldn’t cook, could barely make toast that she washed down with wine. No one had considered that she simply hated the kitchen at the Greer mansion” (159). No one seems to consider that her father was shot in that same kitchen; instead, Beth is not living up to that feminine ideal. As Beth says, “‘A girl who lost her parents couldn’t possibly be spiraling, unable to cope. Easier to write that she’s a slut. It sells more papers” (61). Because Beth has failed to live up to the culturally accepted feminine ideal, she is given no compassion and condemned by society. Once a women has stepped outside of that feminine ideal, like Beth, she becomes a monster in society’s eyes with no room for compassion or doubt: “when that photo ran in the Claire Lake Daily, the town made up its mind. That woman—that uncaring, unfeeling woman—was guilty” (46). St. James makes clear that what Beth is really being found guilty of here is operating outside of the feminine ideal by being apparently uncaring and unfeeling.

Ironically, it is precisely this feminine ideal that makes Lily’s crimes possible. As Lily herself says, “‘Being a girl is the best [...] because no one ever believes you’d do something bad. People think you’ll do nothing, which means you can do anything” (199). Even when their witness identifies Beth, the police have a hard time understanding the concept of a female serial killer. This is further complicated by the fact that Beth is not easily categorized: “She wasn’t a wife or a mother or a daughter, or even a true wild child, despite what the rumors said. She wasn’t anything, which meant she could be anything” (84). This inability of the police to see a woman as having the agency to commit the murders made Lily’s crime spree possible.

St. James uses Shea’s perspective from 2017 to further highlight the difference between current attitudes and those of 1977. As she watches a short television clip of Beth coming home after her trial, Shea is struck by those differences:

In 1977, everyone thought that Beth Greer’s lack of emotion about being put on trial for murder made her unfeeling, almost unnatural, like a witch. Watching the clip in 2017, I heard in her voice a woman who was sick to death of everything, a woman who had lived through her parents’ deaths and was living through a media frenzy, a woman who knew that nothing she said or did would ever matter. (26)

St. James supports this contrast by showing other media from the time through Shea’s eyes. The documentary about the murders, Deadly Woman, presents Beth as “a manipulator, a heartless siren, trying to work her wiles on poor Detective Black and failing in the face of his moral superiority” (112), and Shea describes the only true crime book about the Lady Killer as “a hack job of useless speculation, overwriting and almost comically offensive misogyny, filled with words like she-devil and phrases like Beth Greer’s exotic, overpowering allure” (112). Although The Book of Cold Cases is a thriller and a mystery, St. James also makes it a commentary on societal perspectives of women and the way the feminine ideal shapes and damages the women who come under society’s harsh glare.