A Killing in Cannabis: A True Story of Love, Murder, and California Weed

Investigative journalist Eden (Touchdown Jesus) shines in this novelistic work of true crime. The account opens in 2019, when deputies responded to a 911 call reporting a kidnapping in Santa Cruz, Calif., at the home of tech CEO Tushar Atre, who’d recently launched a cannabis company. Officers soon found Atre dead with his hands bound at his property in the nearby mountains. Drawing on interviews with law enforcement and the CEO’s friends, plus trial testimony and court documents, Eden toggles back and forth between Atre’s early life and career, and the police efforts to solve his murder. Along the way, he shuffles in colorful anecdotes including the story of Atre’s mother, an expert programmer who talked her way into an IBM job in New York in the 1970s despite resistance from her German bosses, and details about Atre’s business partner and former lover, Rachael Lynch, who sold marijuana on the black market before becoming involved with the tech executive and was viewed with suspicion by Atre’s family. Eden keeps the intrigue and emotional investment high until he reveals the details of the convictions and ongoing court proceedings in the home stretch. The author’s ability to dig into how marijuana is grown one minute and generate top-shelf suspense the next sets the account apart. True crime doesn’t come much better than this. Agent: David Granger, Aevitas Creative Management. (Feb.)