The Murder Next Door: A Graphic Memoir, by Hugh D’Andrade, (Feb. 2025, Street Noise Books), $20.99, ISBN: 9781951491352
Ages 14+
In 1978, Hugh discovered his friends crying outside their home in his neighborhood. They had come home from school and discovered their mother lying on the floor, murdered. Forty years later, he’s an adult with a successful career and social life, but he’s also haunted by the murder and experiences anger, anxiety, and panic attacks. Through The Murder Next Door, he examines his trauma and its roots, moving between sessions with his therapist and his memories. Using light blue and black illustration, with red for jarring emphasis, D’Andrade’s art is at once stark and dreamlike; his recall so painful, the reporting at odds with what D’Andrade witnessed, that it all churns in his mind, feeding his anger, his anxiety, his constant feeling of dread. He becomes an adult who baits conspiracy theorists, an adult never quite secure. Writing this memoir, D’Andrade allows readers to sit in on his therapy sessions and see where young Hugh was forced to bear witness to the unthinkable; we see the scars it left, rendered in red ink for readers to witness. A moving portrait of youth lost and of resistant trauma.
I screwed my courage to the sticking place and talked comics with Samuel Sattin, Raina Telgemeier, and Scott McCloud, and Mr. McCloud was kind enough to take a picture with me.
Mom Read It 