Fans of true crime and legal justice will love this book. The writing is clear and includes enough background information to help readers understand the complexity of the case, but not so much to get bogged down. It's very much the author's first person experience with the case

I've listened to a lot of true crime podcasts over the years so I loved the idea of this book. I'm always interested in learning about new cases. While the subject matter in the book is obviously super important, I felt like the writing didn't do it justice.

I received an audio arc to review. To me, it read like a Stephen King novel: a long, drawn-out storyline with sidequest-type anecdotes. Which is fine, just not what I expected.

The narrator did a great job. Very easy to understand at an increased speed.

This is one of those true crime stories where it feels so frustrating because the victim was let down when people refused to help him while he was dying alone, and then he was let down again when the investigators didn't try to find his real killers. The Fairbanks Four were yet more innocent victims, wrongly accused and convicted, and the story of their exoneration felt so long and was definitely not inevitable.
The author of The Fairbanks Four investigated the case after they were already convicted, using a class he was teaching to get new information and go over the problems from the original investigation. He talks about the challenges in his own life while he was doing this, and also talks about the effects on the Four and on their friends and relatives.
There were so many points where it seems like this should have been stopped, and where the Four should have been let go, but it took all those years just to get someone willing to fight hard enough who had the resources to make it happen. Of course it's important for a community to feel closure after experiencing violence but it doesn't do any good to convict the wrong people -- it just creates more victims.
Thanks to NetGalley I got to listen to the audiobook, which was very well done.

The Fairbanks Four tells an important and heartbreaking story — one murder, four wrongful convictions, and a community's determination to seek justice. The book follows the brutal 1997 killing of 15-year-old John Hartman in Fairbanks, Alaska, and the tragic aftermath where four young Alaska Native and American Indian men were wrongfully imprisoned. Journalist Brian Patrick O'Donoghue, unable to let the case go, leads a tireless investigation with his students, exposing the lies, prejudice, and systemic failures that destroyed lives.

While the story itself is powerful and deserves attention, I personally found the writing to be slow and, at times, confusing. The pacing dragged in several parts, making it hard to stay engaged even though the subject matter is so serious and compelling. O'Donoghue’s dedication to uncovering the truth is admirable, but the way the narrative jumps around made it difficult to follow at times. Overall, it’s an important book for understanding injustice in America, but the storytelling style made it a pretty boring read for me most of the time.

I’m a huge true crime fan, so the story behind The Fairbanks Four immediately grabbed my attention. It’s about four young men wrongfully convicted of a brutal murder in Alaska, and the heartbreaking mix of racism, negligence, and terrible police work that led to it. While the facts are powerful and the case deserves way more attention, the writing itself felt choppy and dragged out in places, which made it hard to stay connected. I really wanted to love this more because the story matters so much, but the lack of flow just kept pulling me out of it. Overall,

⭐️⭐️⭐️ 3 stars because the story is important, even if the delivery didn’t quite land.

This book was great. It gave a detailed description of the case and the process of figuring out that the men were innocent. If you love true crime and hard hitting stories you’ll definitley love this one.

I am an avid true crime lover, so the description and idea of this book is great. This book is about a young man that was kick, stomped and brutally beaten to death (he died two days later at the hospital, not at the scene). Then 4 young men were wrongfully arrested and convicted (with very shaky and hardly any evidence). This is a story that I have personally heard very little about and that is disheartening to me before this book because there was so much racism, negligence, shotty police work and overall neglect by the justice department. Professor O’Donoghue brought this case to his students at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks to do some investigative journalism and start the innocence project to get these men’s convictions overturned and their names cleared. This book is full of facts, a horrible and also amazing story but unfortunately just gets lost in the multitude of chapters that come out either choppy or super drawn out. I know that true crime books can be daunting at times and they are hard topics but they still need to be able to drawn in the reader or the narrator needs to be able to draw in the reader with the fluidity of their voice, which unfortunately just does not happen here. I think this story needs to be told and is very interesting and that is why I am rating this book a 3/5 stars. Thank you NetGalley and RBmedia for the opportunity to read and listen to this book! These thought are of my own personal opinion.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Recorded Books Media for gifting me an audio ARC of this true crime story by Brian Patrick O’Donoghue and narrated by Chris Henry Coffey. All opinions expressed in this review are my own - 3 stars.

In 1997, a passerby finds an unconscious teenager, brutally beaten, who subsequently dies days later at the hospital. The police quickly arrest four suspects, all under 21, and all of indigenous backgrounds. All are later convicted and sentenced to long prison terms. The author can't get the story out of his mind, and when given the opportunity to teach a class on investigative reporting, he and his students delve deeply into the case.

Like that of all people wrongly convicted, this is indeed a very sad story, one made worse with blatant racism. I admire all those who devote themselves to uncovering the truth and then seeking to right the wrong. But I was never very invested in this audiobook and it really seemed to drag for me. It seemed disjointed in its presentation and i got people and details very confused. There seemed to be extraneous information while important information was lacking. An important story for sure, especially today, but a bit hard to follow.

Brian Patrick O’Donoghue’s The Fairbanks Four: Murder, Injustice, and the Birth of a Movement tells a compelling story of a wrongful conviction and the long fight for justice. The book shines a light on the tragic murders of John Hartman and Allen Peters in Fairbanks, Alaska, and the subsequent trials and tribulations of the four young men convicted of the crime. O’Donoghue effectively captures the sense of injustice that fueled the decades-long movement to exonerate the Fairbanks Four.
However, the book at times felt like it could have benefited from further editing. The organization occasionally felt disjointed, making it a bit challenging to follow the chronological progression of events and the various legal complexities. While O’Donoghue’s personal connection to the story and his reflections on his own experiences added a layer of depth, I found myself wishing for a greater focus on the details surrounding the murders themselves and perhaps a more in-depth analysis of the initial investigation and trial. The exploration of the author’s journey, while interesting, sometimes overshadowed the central narrative of the crime and the legal battles.
Despite these structural issues and the desire for more focus on the initial crime, The Fairbanks Four remains a worthwhile read for anyone interested in true crime, wrongful convictions, and the power of community activism. It successfully highlights a significant case of potential injustice and the unwavering dedication of those who fought for truth and freedom.

I was excited to receive an advance copy of The Fairbanks Four by Brian Patrick O’Donoghue from Netgalley, as I am a fan of True Crime, and I have not heard much about this case. Fifteen-year-old John Hartmand was murdered in 1997. Four men were arrested for the murder. The case against the men was weak but they were still found guilty in 1999. After 18 years in jail, the convictions were vacated. This book has a chaotic feel due to the scattered organization and the number of characters involved. The bones of the book are there, and this is an important story to be told. It just needs to be adjusted to improve the flow and remove distractions.

I had this book in digital format and I DNFed it at 33% because of the organization. However, I really wanted to know what it was that got the "Fairbanks Four's" convictions overturned. So when I was given the opportunity to listen to the audio, I took it. I did end up finishing it because of this. However, my initial review remains much the same. The organization feels less confusing in audio format for some reason, but it is still extremely hard to follow who is important in this story and what the main idea is. I finished this book and I couldn't even tell you the names of the Fairbanks Four. I don't really understand what it was that got their convictions overturned, and I do not know what movement was born, as the subtitle indicates. This is a book about a journalist's journey, not the wrongly convicted's. I was very disappointed.

This is a very important story to me as I lived in Fairbanks when it all came to an end. I knew how it ended and some parts but I didn't know everything about the case so I have been waiting to get my hands on this one. While I did enjoy learning more about the case I do feel that the execution/presentation of the facts in this book could have been better. It seemed a bit chaotic and seemed to jump all over the place. People "characters" were mentioned that could have been left out as they didn't play a major role in the story at all.

Overall I don't think that this book does justice to what took place to help the boys who are known as the Fairbanks Four.

I was just bored. I love true crime, and when told well, these books can be very compelling. Unfortunately, this one was very dry. There were little to no emotional appeals or connections, which really enhance the reading experience. Perhaps it's because O'Donoghue's background is in news, but the entire thing was dry and information dumping. I wanted more emotion, more connection to the story. It just wasn't for me. If you enjoy information heavy non-fiction without a strong narrative feel, then you might like this one. I just enjoy more narrative non-fiction, which this was not.