Author Howard Blum is writing book on Idaho student deaths

A bestselling author of crime stories and other nonfiction works is working on a book about the stabbing deaths last fall of four students at the University of Idaho.

Howard Blum has a deal with HarperCollins Publishers, which has not yet announced a title or release date. His previous books include Wanted!: The Search for Nazis in America and American Lightning: Terror, Mystery, the Birth of Hollywood, and the Crime of the Century, which in 2009 won an Edgar Award for “best fact crime” book.

Blum has been reporting on the Idaho killings for Air Mail, the digital newsletter co-founded by former Vanity Fair editor-in-chief Graydon Carter.

“I hope to tell a suspenseful factual story that will put readers in the midst of events and help them understand what really happened in the still of the night in Moscow, Idaho,” he said in a statement Wednesday. “And, not least, why it happened.”

Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin were killed Nov. 13.

Bryan Kohberger, a doctoral student at Washington State University, has been charged with four counts of first-degree murder and felony burglary. He was arrested Dec. 30 at his parents’ home in eastern Pennsylvania in connection with the deaths. He has been extradited to Idaho and has yet to enter a plea.

Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition