In “Simon Says: A True Story of Boys, Guns and Murder,” journalist Kathryn Eastburn turns her news coverage into a full-length nonfiction book that, commendably, never seems to collapse under its own detail.

After Carl and Joanna Dutcher and their teenage grandson Tony were found (very) violently murdered at their Park County ranch, police eventually arrested Isaac Grimes and Jon Matheny, two classmates and the former a onetime friend of Tony’s.

As investigators pieced together their theory of the murders, a motive for the crime led to the suspects’ peculiar relationship with a third classmate, Simon Sue. A diminutive-yet-charming Guyana immigrant, Sue was eventually arrested too, despite the fact that he was out of the country during the murders.

Drawing from extensive interviews with family members, investigative reports and court proceedings, Eastburn painstakingly illustrates the before, during and after of what could justifiably be categorized by the platitude ‘senseless crime.’

Grimes and Matheny were awkward loners, but their corruptive influences couldn’t be further from the violent music and video games that get fingered for every teen murder post-Columbine.

Both fell in with Sue, a preternaturally intelligent teenager who may have idolized Jim Jones, the insane religious leader responsible for roughly 900 deaths in the 1970s. Sue convinced the other boys to join Operations and Reconnaissance Agents, a highly secret, paramilitary organization that Sue told them would eventually be called into action should a coup occur in the politically unstable Guyana.

Despite the absurdity of the concept on its face, Sue appears effectively to have convinced Grimes in particular that he and his family’s lives were in danger if he didn’t follow orders.

Said orders included having his bedroom inspected for cleanliness once a month and carrying out Sue’s whims. In one of the more bizarre revelations of the book, Grimes was reportedly forced to eat his own vomit as part of a training exercise.

Some investigators initially thought of OARA as nothing more than a secret club dreamed up by some delusional boys; all that was missing was a treehouse and ‘no-girls-allowed’ sign.

However, as detectives learned how intensely Sue convinced other boys of its existence, one investigator was actually sent to Guyana on a fact-finding mission (the conclusion: the existence of such a group was never verified, and regarded as far-fetched by local officials).

Interestingly, Eastburn imbues her text with myriad cultural landmarks of the current decade, from the Y2K scare to Sept. 11 through the invasion of Iraq and the subsequent torture scandals that emerged.

Although her motives for including these landmarks are never really explained, it’s hard to deny that they do seem to contextualize the crimes.

Despite the pulpy title and cover design, Eastburn’s study is one of measured sensitivity. Equal shrift is given to the victims (the three Dutchers) and their families as to the killers, thereby avoiding a frequent criticism of crime sensationalism.

Eastburn has achieved quite a feat with “Simon Says,” most notably by informing the reader of a crime that, although covered by mainstream media at the time, seemed still to slip under the radar. Potential readers are encouraged to trudge onward, with the only warning that few of the details of these heinous murders are omitted.

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