Almost Rapist: A True Crime Memoir

by Joyce Miller

Almost A True Crime Memoir (Enthusiast Press, 2025) is a debut, high-concept, dark-humor memoir set against the backdrop of the Great Recession when Jöyce, a lapsed cult member and recent NYU acting school graduate whose parents have just lost their house and spent six months at an extended-stay motel during the mortgage crisis, lands a Craigslist job assisting an Oscar and Grammy winning composer, following his near-deadly stroke, on the eve of what she finds out is his Supreme Court rape trial.



While her employer laments his physical recovery as the sole obstacle to his artistic and romantic comeback, Jöyce unravels accumulating sexual-assault charges from newspaper articles as reporters appear near his Upper East Side apartment. Legal inquiries ... surveillance ... deception ... private investigators posing as lovers and victims...murder and greed...all converge in this stunning read about a diametrically opposite, impossibly fated odd couple forced to grapple with the dark side of the entertainment industry.



A wildly humorous memoir written with a painstaking commitment to accuracy over the span of years, Almost Rapist is a New York story chronicling culturally and historically significant criminal charges against a looming central character, representing core reckonings of early 21st century thinking, countered by the equally poignant circumstances of the narrator. Without meaning to, and from a position of vast wonder, the story draws a precise, hypocognitive, bimbo-lectual sampling of the exact moment when rape culture, the resilience of popular-achievement mythology, and economic inequality began to gather for public examination.

664 pages, Paperback

Published October 15, 2025

Reviews

[Hannah Dupont · Rating 4 out of 5]

I bought this book on a whim from a cute little bookstore in NYC. The handsewn binding and velour cover attracted me and I couldn’t refuse its calling. I truly had no idea what to expect, especially given that there are not any reviews of this book. Let me just say- I was pleasantly surprised. I read this memoir in four days. Jöyce chronicles her time as an assistant to an old, crass, condescending, wealthy, successful songwriter/composer/filmmaker who is on trial for rape. Though there is not necessarily a climax nor are there any plot twists, I found this to be a page turner. I felt as if I was living in Jöyce’s mind, learning about her eclectic past, her worldview, and her approach to a challenging life as an artist in NYC. I found myself often chuckling from her musings and the interactions between her and Jooks and I constantly wanted more. I’d recommend this book to friends and I’d absolutely pick up another Jöyce book if she writes any more! I also commend her bravery for writing a factual memoir about her time working with this man. It’s not easy to write honestly, much less publish the story to the public. Thank you, Jöyce, for publishing the truth so boldly.