>Author Jessica Knoll is sitting at home and watching yet another documentary about prolific serial killer Ted Bundy.
This doc is different, so Twitter proclaimed of the 2019 Netflix series. This one features previously unheard recordings.
But was it different? Knoll had heard it all before — a ton of talk about him being handsome, intelligent and charismatic. But there was little to no information about the women he murdered. There was a side of the Bundy story that had yet to be told. And where did this narrative about how great he was come from? Then the book idea hit her.
“I felt this kind of twofold urge to tell this story, to give it back to the women,” Knoll said, “but also to correct the narrative about him.”
Out of that urge, Knoll, a New York Times best-selling fiction author and screenwriter, wrote her newest thriller, “Bright Young Women.” On Monday September 19, 2023, the Strand Bookstore in New York City held an event to celebrate the book’s launch. The event was a conversation between Knoll and Carola Lovering, a thriller author and journalist. The talk focused on Knoll’s inspiration behind the novel, and how she created a fictional story from a fact-based background, taking the general public’s Bundy obsession and returning the story to the victims.
Knoll’s inspiration came from a judge in one of Bundy’s trials. Famously, this judge called Bundy a “bright young man,” which inspired the book’s title. The same judge said that the tragedy of the case was the loss of Bundy’s future. Knoll, however, wanted to highlight what she believed was the true tragedy of the case. “I needed the tragedy to be that she lost her life,” Knoll said when referring to one of the characters in the book.
The popular narrative around Bundy is that he was a Kennedy-esque, handsome and intelligent law student. Knoll wants to change that narrative. “[W]hen I interviewed one of the survivors from the Florida State University attack, she was the one who actually said to me [that], if you really looked at him, he wasn’t that handsome, he wasn’t that smart, and he wasn’t that great.” This alternative view of the Bundy story resonated with people who admire Knoll’s work.
Carola Lovering, journalist and author of “Tell Me Lies,” who joined Knoll in discussion, praised “Bright Young Women.” “It’s really a triumph. It’s so unique. I really have never read anything like it,” Lovering said. “It felt very revolutionary in the way that you really flipped a script on true crime, and it’s propulsive, gorgeously written, character-driven, everything I want in a book.”
Lovering suggested that Knoll accomplished her mission in writing this book. “The world thinks of it as Bundy’s story,” Lovering said. “But you give it back to the women who he killed, and that’s such an accomplishment.”
Judging from the audience’s reaction at the sold-out event, Knoll may have hit on a winning formula. Channell Hannibal, 34, attended the event because she’s a fan of both Knoll and Lovering. Hannibal said that she actively searches for thrillers that highlight female revenge. “So many times, women are portrayed as the victim,” she said. “It’s nice to get content that flips that script.”
Laura Roberts, 36, a middle school teacher and thriller fan, is likewise looking forward to Knoll’s different approach to true-crime thrillers. “I read a lot of thriller books, and I couldn’t predict the twists and turns [of Knoll’s books],” Roberts said. “I think she tells an interesting story.”
For now, Knoll has plenty of other stories to tell. “I’m excited to talk about all things [about] this book when our strike ends,” she said, referring to the Writers Guild of America Strike. “I’m excited for people to read this version of it and for, like, a little bit of a break.”
That break may be fleeting, as Knoll is already working on her next novel.