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The 25 Best True Crime Books Every Person Should Read
Because nonfiction is often sometimes more terrifying and unsettling
For every suspense novel that shocks and awes readers, there are real life stories that make fiction seem tame and predictable. True crime is a loaded genre: The best authors do not sensationalise violence and human suffering, but they provide context and depth to the crimes they study. In these excellent books we see how all lives—from the perpetrators and the investigators, to the victims and their families—are profoundly changed by the destruction detailed within.
PARTY MONSTER by James St. James
Originally titled Disco Bloodbath, this is a true account of a murder within a particular subculture: the New York City club kids of the late eighties and early nineties who partied like it was their jobs. Written by one of the most over the top insiders, Party Monster details the highs and lows of the scene—the fashion, the sex, the indulgence—but also the nasty drug hangovers, culminating in the conviction in 1997 of a club promoter named Michael Alig, who committed a particularly gruesome crime.
AMERICAN FIRE: Love, Arson, and Life in a Vanishing Land by Monica Hesse
A gripping, fast-paced story with an asset that few true crime books have: no body count. The story of serial arsonists who tore through the economically depressed rural Accomack County, American Fire is more about the good people of the area and the volunteer firefighters working way overtime than it is about the villains--but even then, and with no spoilers, the Freudian motivation of the culprits are fascinating.
UNDER THE BANNER OF HEAVEN: A Story of Violent Faith by Jon Krakauer
“There is a dark side to religious devotion that is too often ignored or denied. As a means of motivating people to be cruel or inhumane, there may be no more potent force than religion. When the subject of religiously inspired bloodshed comes up, many Americans immediately think of Islamic fundamentalism, which is to be expected in the wake of 911. But men have been committing heinous acts in the name of God ever since mankind began believing in deities, and extremists exist within all religions… Plenty of these religious extremist have been homegrown, corn-fed Americans.”—Jon Krakauer
I’LL BE GONE IN THE DARK: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer by Michelle McNamara
Author Michelle McNamara died suddenly in the process of writing this game-changing investigation of the Golden State Killer. That the book feels triumphant even after tragedy upon tragedy is a testament to McNamara’s skill as a reporter and the determination of her husband (comedian Patton Oswalt) to tie up loose ends and push forward with the publication.
SHOT IN THE HEART by Mikal Gilmore
Norman Mailer’s The Executioner’s Song told the story of Gary Gilmore, the first murderer to be executed in the U.S. (in 1977) in nearly a decade. That Gary’s younger brother Mikal is a celebrated journalist in his own right makes him the ideal writer to tell the story from a much different perspective: a multigenerational story of dysfunction, abuse, and what drives a person to become a killer.
THE SUSPICIONS OF MR. WHICHER : A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective by Kate Summerscale
At a time when the job of the detective was fairly new, Inspector Jonathan Whicher was the best of the bunch in Victorian London. When a young child was found dead with a slit throat in 1860, Whicher was brought in to investigate. Unfortunately, his hunch that the child’s family was involved was true, although there was no way for him to prove such a thing at the time. Although his story ends with perceived failure, the clever and tough Whicher became the real life model on whom so many of literature’s best detectives are based.
COLUMBINE by Dave Cullen
In an age when school shootings take place in America nearly every day, it can become way too easy to tune them out. Dave Cullen’s reportage on the shooting at Columbine High School in 1999 is more important now than ever. Even as he details how Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold managed to plan and execute a massacre, he is careful to give dignity to all involved--the teachers, the students, their parents.
Blood Will Out: The True Story of a Murder, a Mystery, and a Masquerade by Walter Kirn
What happens when a fiction writer encounters a real life Talented Mr. Ripley? Author Walter Kirn takes readers inside his relationship with the man he knew as Clark Rockefeller, a murderer and swindler who presented himself as a scion of one of America's wealthiest families. Kirn questions why he was so taken in personally by this impostor's story, even as he lays out all of the clues and evidence that his friend was a con man.
THE FACT OF A BODY: A Murder and the Memoir by Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich
Part memoir, part investigation into the murder of a six year old boy in the early nineties, The Fact of a Body explores how our personal experiences shape how we see crimes and the people who perpetrated them. The author’s own experience with sexual abuse is the lens through which she approaches the pedophile and confessed murderer who she’s supposed to help defend in court.
THE POISONER’S HANDBOOK by Deborah Blum
In the early days of the twentieth century, murdering people with arsenic or cyanide was easy-ish because poisons such as those were untraceable. Until 1918. Deborah Blum’s history of the birth of forensic science in New York City, when a new medical examiner made great strides in toxicology, is a must-read for fans of Jazz Age transgressions with a generous dose of chemistry.
JUSTICE: Crimes, Trials, and Punishments by Dominick Dunne
No one covered the lifestyles of the rich and infamous better than Dominick Dunne. His novels covered ripped from the headlines gossipy tales of upper class evil, but his Vanity Fair columns still had keen observations with the extra bonus of being fact-checked. Ranging from subjects like O.J. Simpson and the Menendez Brothers, to Claus von Bülow and the man who murdered Dunne’s own daughter, the essays in this collection are unmissable and haunting.
HOMICIDE: A Year on the Killing Streets by David Simon
The book that inspired the hit '90s series, The Wire creator David Simon’s masterpiece finds him embedded with one the busiest police department in the country: the Baltimore homicide squad. With an ear for dialogue like no other, Simon captures the grit of the city, and both the humanity and the fallibility of law enforcement officers as well as the criminals they pursue.
MY DARK PLACES by James Ellroy
One of the world’s best living crime writers, James Ellroy reveals the personal tragedy from which his obsessions emerged in his most personal book. Ellroy’s mother was murdered in 1958 when he was ten years old, and as an adult in 1994 he teams up with an LAPD officer to find her killer. Even when the murderer appears to be in reach, it’s clear that the chaos he brought to the author’s life remains unresolved.
MIDNIGHT IN THE GARDEN OF GOOD AND EVIL by John Berendt
A 1981 shooting and its fallout are the subject of this epic about life and death in the city of Savannah. Rich with the kind of diverse cast of characters you’d find in a novel, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil is as rich in ambience and local color as it is in plot.
KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann
A wonderfully researched, beautifully written history of injustice taken to horrifying lengths. When a string of murders plagued the oil rich Osage Indian nation in the 1920s, the Feds were brought in to investigate. David Grann traces their probe, revealing corruption at every layer of law enforcement and government, and the inhumanity that rampant greed so often breeds.
DEVIL’S KNOT: THE TRUE STORY OF THE WEST MEMPHIS THREE by Mara Leveritt
They wore black and painted their nails black and listened to Metallica. And in Arkansas in 1993 that was enough (along with a coerced confession from the mentally disabled one of the trio) to convict three semi-rebellious teenagers for the murders of three eight year-olds. Mara Leveritt traces the flaws in the justice system that kept these young men in prison for 18 years, and their ultimate release as adults who were deeply wronged by society.
THE BROTHERS: The Road to an American Tragedy by Masha Gessen
It isn’t enough to track the American experience of the two Chechnyan brothers who were responsible for the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing. Journalist and activist Masha Gessen provides context for the actions of the brothers Tsarnaev, tracing their lineage through a stream of war-torn countries so that by the time they immigrated to America, their (often righteous) anger elevated to unforgivable, murderous levels.
THE BLOOD OF EMMETT TILL by Timothy B. Tyson
The brutal murder that spawned the Civil Rights movement, the lynching of teenager Emmett Till in Mississippi revealed the depths of racism in America in the 1950s. But Till was more than just a symbol of injustice, and Timothy B. Tyson adds context to his short life.
DEVIL IN THE WHITE CITY: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America by Erik Larson
The setting is the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, and the main character is an architect. And the other main character is a serial killer. Erik Larsen’s history would have been fascinating enough had he only recounted the rich technological and cultural moment of the Fair. That there was also a killer on the loose serves as a reminder of the baseness of man even when juxtaposed with the promise of modernity.
THE PEOPLE WHO EAT DARKNESS by Richard Lloyd Parry
Richard Lloyd Parry’s account of a young British woman who went missing in Tokyo in 2000 is fascinating in its close look into the ways the Japanese justice system works and its exploration of the sinister underbelly of one of the safest cities in the world. He eschews easy answers as to what drives a person to act with such depravity, and instead shows us every angle of the case.
Kreizman, a former book editor and avid reader who writes frequently about books, has contributed to The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, Vanity Fair, Esquire, and more.
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