Year 13, Book 34

34. An Unexplained Death: The True Story of a Body at the Belvedere Hotel by Mikitia Brottman

This book was super all over the place. Supposedly it’s a sort of true crime book about a body that was discovered in Baltimore’s Belvedere Hotel, which has actually long been condos and not a functioning hotel. The police ruled it a suicide, but the author of the book who lives at the Belvedere believed there was something more sinister going on and has spent years investigating what might have actually happened. She gets real conspiracy theory and nothing ever really comes of it other than a lot of crazy speculation. Throw in her randomly constantly switching topics in the middle of chapters to talk about her mental health or other murder cases or the history of the building and this book does not really know what it wants to be. As someone who lives in Baltimore I did find the parts about the history of the building to be interesting, but I would rather have just read a book about that without all the other nonsense this book was composed of. I give it a 4 out of 10.