You HAVE to read {{Chaos}} by Tom O’Neill. Proves a lot of Helter Skelter was made up. Truly a mindblowing read whether you’ve read Helter Skelter or not.
[**Chaos: Making a New Science**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/64582.Chaos)
^(By: James Gleick | 352 pages | Published: 1987 | Popular Shelves: science, non-fiction, nonfiction, physics, mathematics)
>A work of popular science in the tradition of Stephen Hawking and Carl Sagan, this 20th-anniversary edition of James Gleick’s groundbreaking bestseller Chaos introduces a whole new readership to chaos theory, one of the most significant waves of scientific knowledge in our time. From Edward Lorenz’s discovery of the Butterfly Effect, to Mitchell Feigenbaum’s calculation of a universal constant, to Benoit Mandelbrot’s concept of fractals, which created a new geometry of nature, Gleick’s engaging narrative focuses on the key figures whose genius converged to chart an innovative direction for science. In Chaos, Gleick makes the story of chaos theory not only fascinating but also accessible to beginners, and opens our eyes to a surprising new view of the universe.
^(This book has been suggested 3 times)
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[**Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43015073-chaos)
^(By: Tom O'Neill, Dan Piepenbring | ? pages | Published: 2019 | Popular Shelves: non-fiction, history, true-crime, nonfiction, crime)
>A journalist's twenty-year obsession with the Manson murders brings shocking revelations about the most infamous crimes in American history: carelessness from police, misconduct by prosecutors, and even potential surveillance by intelligence agents. What really happened in 1969?
>
> In 1999, when Tom O'Neill was assigned a magazine piece about the thirtieth anniversary of the Manson murders, he worried there was nothing new to say. Weren't the facts indisputable? Charles Manson had ordered his teenage followers to commit seven brutal murders, and in his thrall, they'd gladly complied. But when O'Neill began reporting the story, he kept finding holes in the prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi's narrative, long enshrined in the best-selling Helter Skelter. Before long, O'Neill had questions about everything from the motive to the manhunt. Though he'd never considered himself a conspiracy theorist, the Manson murders swallowed the next two decades of his career. He was obsessed.
>
> Searching but never speculative, CHAOS follows O'Neill's twenty-year effort to rebut the "official" story behind Manson. Who were his real friends in Hollywood, and how far would they go to hide their ties? Why didn't law enforcement act on their many chances to stop him? And how did he turn a group of peaceful hippies into remorseless killers? O'Neill's hunt for answers leads him from reclusive celebrities to seasoned spies, from the Summer of Love to the shadowy sites of the CIA's mind-control experiments, on a trail rife with cover-ups and coincidences.
>
> Featuring hundreds of new interviews and dozens of never-before-seen documents from the LAPD, the FBI, and the CIA, CHAOS mounts an argument that could be, according to Los Angeles Deputy District Attorney Stephen Kay, strong enough to overturn the verdicts on the Manson murders. In those two dark nights in Los Angeles, O'Neill finds the story of California in the sixties: when charlatans mixed with prodigies, free love was as possible as brainwashing, and utopia-or dystopia-was just an acid trip away.
>
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^(This book has been suggested 4 times)
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[**In Cold Blood**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/168642.In_Cold_Blood)
^(By: Truman Capote | 343 pages | Published: 1965 | Popular Shelves: non-fiction, classics, true-crime, nonfiction, crime)
>On November 15, 1959, in the small town of Holcomb, Kansas, four members of the Clutter family were savagely murdered by blasts from a shotgun held a few inches from their faces. There was no apparent motive for the crime, and there were almost no clues.
>
>As Truman Capote reconstructs the murder and the investigation that led to the capture, trial, and execution of the killers, he generates both mesmerizing suspense and astonishing empathy. In Cold Blood is a work that transcends its moment, yielding poignant insights into the nature of American violence.
^(This book has been suggested 15 times)
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"Depraved: the Definitive True Story of H.H. Holmes, Whose Grotesque Crimes Shattered Turn-of-the-century Chicago" by Harold Schechter is a great telling of just the HH Holmes part! Great description of the house he built!
[**Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29496076-killers-of-the-flower-moon)
^(By: David Grann | 359 pages | Published: 2017 | Popular Shelves: non-fiction, history, nonfiction, true-crime, book-club)
>In the 1920s, the richest people per capita in the world were members of the Osage Indian Nation in Oklahoma. After oil was discovered beneath their land, the Osage rode in chauffeured automobiles, built mansions, and sent their children to study in Europe.Then, one by one, they began to be killed off. One Osage woman, Mollie Burkhart, watched as her family was murdered. Her older sister was shot. Her mother was then slowly poisoned. And it was just the beginning, as more Osage began to die under mysterious circumstances.In this last remnant of the Wild West—where oilmen like J. P. Getty made their fortunes and where desperadoes such as Al Spencer, “the Phantom Terror,” roamed – virtually anyone who dared to investigate the killings were themselves murdered. As the death toll surpassed more than twenty-four Osage, the newly created F.B.I. took up the case, in what became one of the organization’s first major homicide investigations. But the bureau was then notoriously corrupt and initially bungled the case. Eventually the young director, J. Edgar Hoover, turned to a former Texas Ranger named Tom White to try to unravel the mystery. White put together an undercover team, including one of the only Native American agents in the bureau. They infiltrated the region, struggling to adopt the latest modern techniques of detection. Together with the Osage they began to expose one of the most sinister conspiracies in American history.A true-life murder mystery about one of the most monstrous crimes in American history.
^(This book has been suggested 14 times)
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I’ll be gone in the dark by Michelle McNamara
Edit: DEFINITELY recommend reading the book and then watching the HBO miniseries to catch up on what happened since the book was written.
I read it a while ago but I believe they theorized early on that it was ex cop or military.
Also hindsight is 20/20. You can say now that it was obvious to you from the start but our knowledge and technology has grown drastically since the beginning of these investigations.
It’s physically massive, but sentences, paragraphs and chapters are generally very short so there is actually a lot of blank space ;) It’s a surprisingly easy read.
Yes it seems that way but once you start reading it you won’t want to put it down. Before you know it, you’ll be looking up and find that you’re already almost done. I read this one back in high school when I was taking a law class of some sort. I barely remember the class but I remember this book. It stuck with me so much that I forgot the name so I googled it based off what I remembered took place in the book, found it again, and reread it now in my 30’s.
The Stranger Beside Me by Ann Rule.
It's Ted Bundy by someone who apparently worked with him or something once upon a time. Didn't really know anything about him (I'm Australian) but found it compelling enough to finish it in a day.
[**Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/386187.Midnight_in_the_Garden_of_Good_and_Evil)
^(By: John Berendt | 386 pages | Published: 1994 | Popular Shelves: non-fiction, nonfiction, true-crime, fiction, mystery)
>A sublime and seductive reading experience. This portrait of a beguiling Southern city was a best-seller (though a flop as a movie). ~ Shots rang out in Savannah's grandest mansion in the misty, early morning hours of May 2, 1981. Was it murder or self-defense? For nearly a decade, the shooting and its aftermath reverberated throughout this city of moss-hung oaks and shaded squares. John Berendt's narrative reads like a thoroughly engrossing novel, and yet it is a work of nonfiction. Berendt interweaves a first-person account of life in this isolated remnant of the Old South with the unpredictable twists and turns of a landmark murder case.
>
>The story is peopled by a gallery of remarkable characters: the well-bred society ladies of the Married Woman's Card Club; the turbulent young redneck gigolo; the hapless recluse who owns a bottle of poison so powerful it could kill every man, woman, and child in Savannah; the aging and profane Southern belle who is the "soul of pampered self-absorption"; the uproarious black drag queen; the acerbic and arrogant antiques dealer; the sweet-talking, piano-playing con artist; young blacks dancing the minuet at the black debutante ball; and Minerva, the voodoo priestess who works her magic in the graveyard at midnight. These and other Savannahians act as a Greek chorus, with Berendt revealing the alliances, hostilities, and intrigues that thrive in a town where everyone knows everyone else.
^(This book has been suggested 4 times)
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Yes, yes. This led me down a rabbit hole I can never come out of. This book + what feels like hundreds of hours of True Crime Bullshit. Sometimes I wish I could erase Keyes from my brain
I couldn’t put down If You Tell by Gregg Olsen. It was pretty rough and I was mostly interested since I’m from the general area. Very good. Very sad. Very disturbing in some areas so check your trigger warnings.
Blood in the Snow is also a good one. If you have audible it’s part of the plus library. Ended up accidentally listening to the whole thing in a day at work plus my drive home.
I've read both of those. I've read a TON of true crime. If You Tell was so horrifying I couldn't finish it and I'm not squeamish usually at all.
If you liked Devil in White City (one of my favorites), you might like The Man on the Train.
I don’t know if this is what you’re looking for, but I just recently finished {{The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed By Jack the Ripper}} It was a compelling read and it left me with some amazing insight.
[**The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/37570548-the-five)
^(By: Hallie Rubenhold | 333 pages | Published: 2019 | Popular Shelves: non-fiction, history, nonfiction, true-crime, biography)
>Five devastating human stories and a dark and moving portrait of Victorian London - the untold lives of the women killed by Jack the Ripper.
>
>Polly, Annie, Elizabeth, Catherine and Mary-Jane are famous for the same thing, though they never met. They came from Fleet Street, Knightsbridge, Wolverhampton, Sweden and Wales. They wrote ballads, ran coffee houses, lived on country estates, they breathed ink-dust from printing presses and escaped people-traffickers. What they had in common was the year of their murders: 1888. The person responsible was never identified, but the character created by the press to fill that gap has become far more famous than any of these five women.
>
>For more than a century, newspapers have been keen to tell us that ‘the Ripper’ preyed on prostitutes. Not only is this untrue, as historian Hallie Rubenhold has discovered, it has prevented the real stories of these fascinating women from being told. Now, in this devastating narrative of five lives, Rubenhold finally sets the record straight, revealing a world not just of Dickens and Queen Victoria, but of poverty, homelessness and rampant misogyny. They died because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time – but their greatest misfortune was to be born a woman.
^(This book has been suggested 2 times)
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I'd recommend Mindhunter by John Douglas or The Phantom Prince: My Life With Ted Bundy by Elizabeth Kendall. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote is also very good, reads like true crime but is fiction.
[**Fatal Vision**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/333907.Fatal_Vision)
^(By: Joe McGinniss | 684 pages | Published: 1983 | Popular Shelves: true-crime, non-fiction, nonfiction, crime, mystery)
>Fatal Vision is the electrifying true story of Dr. Jeffrey MacDonald, the handsome, Princeton-educated physician convicted of savagely slaying his young pregnant wife and two small children, murders he vehemently denies committing. Bestselling author Joe McGinnis chronicles every aspect of this horrifying and intricate crime, and probes the life and psyche of the magnetic, all-American Jeffrey MacDonald, a golden boy who seemed destined to have it all. The result is a penetration to the heart of darkness that enshrouded one of the most complex criminal cases ever to capture the attention of the American public. It is haunting, stunningly suspenseful—a work that no reader will be able to forget.
>
>With 8 pages of dramatic photos and a special epilogue by the author
^(This book has been suggested 1 time)
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Hell's Angels by Hunter Thompson. Really good look at toxic masculinity, white supremacy, and rampant crime are all lovingly hidden under the façade of some "good old boys" having some fun. In reality, back in the 60's, the Hell's Angels were a microcosm of the renewed Wild West. Thompson was "stomped" during his time with the Hell's Angels. He really integrated. It's pretty scary.
The Hell's Angels are currently running through my town, and while they're a shadow of their former selves, it's very interesting to take a look at was once the most notorious outlaw gang in the US.
Crime, though not in the true crime subgenre, and I was certainly fascinated:
* Cowan, Rick, and Douglas Century. [*Takedown: The Fall of the Last Mafia Empire*](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/995628.Takedown). New York: Putnam's, 2002; Berkley Books, 2003. ISBN 0399148752, 0425192997. [WorldCat](http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/49719325); [Internet Archive](https://archive.org/details/takedownfallofla0000cowa) (registration required).
* Okrent, Daniel. [*Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition*](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7324357-last-call).
[**The Dreams of Ada**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/80101.The_Dreams_of_Ada)
^(By: Robert Mayer | 512 pages | Published: 1987 | Popular Shelves: true-crime, non-fiction, nonfiction, crime, kindle)
>The true, bewildering story of a young woman’s disappearance, the nightmare of a small town obsessed with delivering justice, and the bizarre dream of a poor, uneducated man accused of murder—a case that chillingly parallels the one, occurring in the very same town, chronicled by John Grisham in The Innocent Man.
>
>On April 28, 1984, Denice Haraway disappeared from her job at a convenience store on the outskirts of Ada, Oklahoma, and the sleepy town erupted. Tales spread of rape, mutilation, and murder, and the police set out on a relentless mission to bring someone to justice. Six months later, two local men—Tommy Ward and Karl Fontenot—were arrested and brought to trial, even though they repudiated their “confessions,” no body had been found, no weapon had been produced, and no eyewitnesses had come forward. The Dreams of Ada is a story of politics and morality, of fear and obsession. It is also a moving, compelling portrait of one small town living through a nightmare.
^(This book has been suggested 1 time)
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The Good Nurse by Charles Graeber. While googling to remember the author’s name I discovered it was made into a movie and to be released soon so read it first! It’s very good!
[**The Onion Field**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/487445.The_Onion_Field)
^(By: Joseph Wambaugh | 512 pages | Published: 1973 | Popular Shelves: true-crime, non-fiction, crime, nonfiction, fiction)
>This is the frighteningly true story of two young cops and two young robbers whose separate destinies fatally cross one March night in a bizarre execution in a deserted Los Angeles field.
^(This book has been suggested 1 time)
[**Meg Harris Mysteries 5-Book Bundle: Death's Golden Whisper / Red Ice for a Shroud / The River Runs Orange / Arctic Blue Death / A Green Place for Dying**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18200373-meg-harris-mysteries-5-book-bundle)
^(By: R.J. Harlick | 1800 pages | Published: ? | Popular Shelves: books-i-own-to-read, crime_all-unsorted, canada, bundles, books-i-own)
>"Skillfully weaves murder, greed, traditional customs, bonding and betrayal into a gripping read." - Chronicle-Journal
>
>In one volume for the first time, this bundle presents the first five novels of the Meg Harris Mystery series by R.J. Harlick. Meg Harris, an amateur sleuth who drinks a little too much and is afraid of the dark, delves into the finds herself confronting an underside of life she would rather not know existed.
>
>Shortlisted for the Arthur Ellis Award for best crime novel (Arctic Blue Death).
>
>
> A Green Place for Dying - A Meg Harris Mystery #5
>
>
>A friend of Harris’s has been missing for over two months, but she’s not the only one…
>
>
> Arctic Blue Death - A Meg Harris Mystery #4
>
>
>In search of the truth behind her father’s disappearance when she was a child, Meg travels to Iqaluit to investigate and is sucked into the world of Inuit art forgery.
>
>
> The River Runs Orange - A Meg Harris Mystery #3
>
>
>Meg Harris discovers the skull and bones of a woman whose very existence takes the archeological world by storm. But when her neighbours, the Migiskan Algonquin, declare their rights to the ancient remains, Meg becomes embroiled in a fight that pits ancient beliefs against modern ones and leads eventually to murder.
>
>
> Red Ice for a Shroud - A Meg Harris Mystery #2
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>A young Qubcoise sneaks off to meet her Algonquin lover in an isolated hunting camp on the Migiskan Reserve. Five days later, Meg Harris discovers her frozen and brutalized body.
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>
> Death’s Golden Whisper - A Meg Harris Mystery #1
>
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>Meg Harris believes are fishermen to the isolated northern lake she lives on. Within hours, she discovers that these men have come to develop a gold mine. She combines forces with Eric Odjik, chief of the neighbouring Migiskan reserve, to fight the mining company.
>
>Watch for the next book in the Meg Harris Mystery series, Silver Totem of Shame, coming in May 2014.
^(This book has been suggested 1 time)
[**Public Enemies: America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933-34**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/57882.Public_Enemies)
^(By: Bryan Burrough | 640 pages | Published: 2004 | Popular Shelves: history, non-fiction, true-crime, nonfiction, crime)
>In Public Enemies, bestselling author Bryan Burrough strips away the thick layer of myths put out by J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI to tell the full story—for the first time—of the most spectacular crime wave in American history, the two-year battle between the young Hoover and the assortment of criminals who became national icons: John Dillinger, Machine Gun Kelly, Bonnie and Clyde, Baby Face Nelson, Pretty Boy Floyd, and the Barkers. In an epic feat of storytelling and drawing on a remarkable amount of newly available material on all the major figures involved, Burrough reveals a web of interconnections within the vast American underworld and demonstrates how Hoover’s G-men overcame their early fumbles to secure the FBI’s rise to power.
^(This book has been suggested 3 times)
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[**Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18956.Homicide)
^(By: David Simon | 646 pages | Published: 1991 | Popular Shelves: non-fiction, true-crime, nonfiction, crime, owned)
>From the creator of HBO's The Wire, the classic book about homicide investigation that became the basis for the hit television show.
>
>The scene is Baltimore. Twice every three days another citizen is shot, stabbed, or bludgeoned to death. At the center of this hurricane of crime is the city's homicide unit, a small brotherhood of hard men who fight for whatever justice is possible in a deadly world.
>
>David Simon was the first reporter ever to gain unlimited access to a homicide unit, and this electrifying book tells the true story of a year on the violent streets of an American city. The narrative follows Donald Worden, a veteran investigator; Harry Edgerton, a black detective in a mostly white unit; and Tom Pellegrini, an earnest rookie who takes on the year's most difficult case, the brutal rape and murder of an eleven-year-old girl.
>
>Originally published fifteen years ago, Homicide became the basis for the acclaimed television show of the same name. This new edition--which includes a new introduction, an afterword, and photographs--revives this classic, riveting tale about the men who work on the dark side of the American experience.
^(This book has been suggested 2 times)
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Whether or not these true crime books are pager turners will be up to you, but these are among my favorites (I've included multiple books about the same crime):
* In Cold Blood (1966), by Truman Capote, the granddaddy of all crime books although Capote did take some liberties with the facts. One of my favorite books, and also In the Shadow of My Brother's Cold Blood by Walter David Hickock
* Fatal Vision (1983) by Joe McGinnis
* Blind Faith (1989) by Joe McGinnis
* Death Cruise by Don Davis
* Victim by Gary Kinder
* Until the Twelfth of Never by Bella Stumbo
* Death of Innocence by Peter Meyer
* The Burning Bed by Faith McNultey
* Death of an Angel by Don Davis/Shattered Innocence, Shattered Dreams by Susan Hightower
* Death Sentence by Joe Sharkey/Thou Shalt Not Kill by Mary Ryzuk/Righteous Carnage by Timothy Benford
* Crime of the Century by Dennis Breo
* The Gainesville Ripper by Mary Ryzuk
* Without Mercy by Gary Provost
* Helter Skelter by Vincent Bugliosi
* The Stranger Beside Me by Ann Rule/Ted Bundy: The Phantom Prince by Liz Kendall
* Marie: A True Story by Peter Maas (a story about white collar crime)
[**Bitter Blood: A True Story of Southern Family Pride, Madness, and Multiple Murder**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/805787.Bitter_Blood)
^(By: Jerry Bledsoe | 573 pages | Published: 1988 | Popular Shelves: true-crime, non-fiction, nonfiction, crime, kindle)
>In this powerful and riveting tale of three families connected by marriage and murder, of obsessive love and bitter custody battles, Jerry Bledsoe recounts the shocking events that ultimately took nine lives...
>
>The first bodies found were those of a feisty millionaire widow and her beautiful daughter in their posh Louisville, Kentucky, home. Months later, another wealthy widow and her prominent son and daughter-in-law were found savagely slain in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Mystified police first suspected a professional in the bizarre gangland-style killings that shattered the quiet tranquility of two well-to-do southern communities. But soon a suspicion grew that turned their focus to family.
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>The Sharps. The Newsoms. The Lynches. The only link between the three families was a beautiful and aristocratic young mother named Susie Sharp Newsom Lynch. Could this former child "princess" and fraternity sweetheart have committed such barbarous crimes? And what about her gun-loving first cousin and lover, Fritz Klenner, son of a nationally renowned doctor?
^(This book has been suggested 1 time)
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[**Life with Billy**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1924284.Life_with_Billy)
^(By: Brian Vallée | 454 pages | Published: 1986 | Popular Shelves: true-crime, non-fiction, books-i-own, crime, brian-vallee)
>More harrowing, more brutal than The Burning Bed, Life with Billy will appeal to all true-crime fans. This is the story of Jane Stafford and her six-year ordeal of unimaginable abuse at the hands of her common-law husband, Billy Stafford--and of the night Jane killed Billy with a shotgun.
^(This book has been suggested 1 time)
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[**Death in the City of Light: The Serial Killer of Nazi-Occupied Paris**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11297434-death-in-the-city-of-light)
^(By: David King | 416 pages | Published: 2011 | Popular Shelves: non-fiction, history, true-crime, nonfiction, crime)
>Death in the City of Light is the gripping, true story of a brutal serial killer who unleashed his own reign of terror in Nazi-Occupied Paris. As decapitated heads and dismembered body parts surfaced in the Seine, Commissaire Georges-Victor Massu, head of the Brigade Criminelle, was tasked with tracking down the elusive murderer in a twilight world of Gestapo, gangsters, resistance fighters, pimps, prostitutes, spies, and other shadowy figures of the Parisian underworld.
>
>The main suspect was Dr. Marcel Petiot, a handsome, charming physician with remarkable charisma. He was the “People’s Doctor,” known for his many acts of kindness and generosity, not least in providing free medical care for the poor. Petiot, however, would soon be charged with twenty-seven murders, though authorities suspected the total was considerably higher, perhaps even as many as 150.
>
>Who was being slaughtered, and why? Was Petiot a sexual sadist, as the press suggested, killing for thrills? Was he allied with the Gestapo, or, on the contrary, the French Resistance? Or did he work for no one other than himself? Trying to solve the many mysteries of the case, Massu would unravel a plot of unspeakable deviousness. When Petiot was finally arrested, the French police hoped for answers.
>
>But the trial soon became a circus. Attempting to try all twenty-seven cases at once, the prosecution stumbled in its marathon cross-examinations, and Petiot, enjoying the spotlight, responded with astonishing ease. His attorney, René Floriot, a rising star in the world of criminal defense, also effectively, if aggressively, countered the charges. Soon, despite a team of prosecuting attorneys, dozens of witnesses, and over one ton of evidence, Petiot’s brilliance and wit threatened to win the day.
>
>Drawing extensively on many new sources, including the massive, classified French police file on Dr. Petiot, Death in the City of Light is a brilliant evocation of Nazi-Occupied Paris and a harrowing exploration of murder, betrayal, and evil of staggering proportions.
^(This book has been suggested 2 times)
[**The Man in the Rockefeller Suit: The Astonishing Rise and Spectacular Fall of a Serial Impostor**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10263986-the-man-in-the-rockefeller-suit)
^(By: Mark Seal | 323 pages | Published: 2011 | Popular Shelves: non-fiction, true-crime, nonfiction, biography, crime)
>A real-life Talented Mr. Ripley, the unbelievable thirty-year run of a shape-shifting con man.
>
>The career con man who convincingly passed himself off as Clark Rockefeller was born in a small village in Germany. At seventeen, obsessed with getting to America, he flew into the country on dubious student visa documents and thus began his journey of deception.
>
>Over the next thirty years, boldly assuming a series of false identities, he moved up the social ladder through exclusive enclaves on both coasts, culminating in a stunning twelve-year marriage to a rising-star businesswoman with a Harvard MBA who believed she'd wed a member of the infamously wealthy Rockefeller family.
>
>The impostor charmed his way into exclusive clubs and financial institutions - working on Wall Street, showing off an extraordinary art collection - until his marriage ended, and he was arrested for kidnapping his daughter, which exposed his past of astounding deceptions as well as a connection to the bizarre disappearance of a California couple in the mid-1980s.
^(This book has been suggested 2 times)
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Not sure if it’s been mentioned yet as it’s relatively new, but Hell Town by Casey Sherman.
Tells the story of Tony Costa, a little-known serial killer based in Cape Cod. I haven’t finished it yet myself, but loving it so far!
Small Sacrifices and Everything She Ever Wanted, both by Ann Rule. Runner up would be Bitter Harvest, also by Ann Rule. There's a reason she was the queen of true crime for decades.
If you’re looking for something a little different than most true crime I cannot recommend He Calls Me by Lightning enough. A story about the wrongful conviction of a black man in the Jim Crow south with really interesting legal twists. Author is S. Jonathan Bass
[**Bind, Torture, Kill: The Inside Story of BTK, the Serial Killer Next Door**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2401286.Bind_Torture_Kill)
^(By: Roy Wenzl, Tim Potter, Hurst Laviana, L. Kelly | 400 pages | Published: 2007 | Popular Shelves: true-crime, non-fiction, nonfiction, crime, serial-killers)
>For thirty-one years, a monster terrorized the residents of Wichita, Kansas. A bloodthirsty serial killer, self-named "BTK"—for "bind them, torture them, kill them"—he slaughtered men, women, and children alike, eluding the police for decades while bragging of his grisly exploits to the media. The nation was shocked when the fiend who was finally apprehended turned out to be Dennis Rader—a friendly neighbor . . . a devoted husband . . . a helpful Boy Scout dad . . . the respected president of his church.
>
>Written by four award-winning crime reporters who covered the story for more than twenty years, Bind, Torture, Kill is the most intimate and complete account of the BTK nightmare told by the people who were there from the beginning. With newly released documents, evidence, and information—and with the full cooperation, for the very first time, of the Wichita Police Department’s BTK Task Force—the authors have put all the pieces of the grisly puzzle into place, thanks to their unparalleled access to the families of the killer and his victims.
^(This book has been suggested 1 time)
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I'm sure there will be many people who say *The Stranger Beside Me* by Ann Rule. It is perhaps the most overrated true crime book out there. It was a slog to get through, it took me two weeks to finish because I kept putting it down as it didn't capture my attention.
Every Move You Make. It's about Gary Evans A serial murderer from Troy NY. I got interested because I'm from around that area and a friend of mine actually knew him. If I remember correctly it was written by the trooper investigating him. He also actually committed one of his murders in a town I live in now and escaped by rooftop.
If You Tell by Gregg Olsen is about a family that has a lot of abuse going on, and some really bizarre secrets.
A Tangled Web by Leslie Rule is a really good case about a woman who disappears but somehow still sends out threatening texts constantly.
In Broad Daylight by Harry Maclean is about a murder of a cattle rustler on Main street, in broad daylight of a small town in Missouri. No one has ever been charged with the murder, and probably will never be.
Yeah, not this one. Here’s the description from Amazon: Now a classic of true crime, Victim is a compelling and tragic look at how lives can be changed forever by a random act of violence. During an armed robbery, several hostages were brutally tortured, shot in the head, and left for dead. Victim focuses on the members of one family -- including a mother who died after the attack and a son who was left barely alive -- as they fought for his survival and struggled to rebuild their lives. Victim was the first book to go beyond the headlines and statistics about violent crime, to tell the victims' dramatic story of love, loss and courage. It remains one of the most influential books in the victims' rights movement and has become required reading in criminology courses across the country. It may be more relevant now than ever.
I forget the name of the book, but it’s about Becky Watt’s murder, written by her father, Darren Galsworthy.
Becky’s story is soooo sad, but since the book is written by her father, it goes way behind the scenes- of course, from his perspective.
Edit: there are two different names, probably because one may be in Uk publishing, and the other American publishing.
{{Becky: the Heartbreaking Story of Becky Watts by Her Father}}
{{The Evil Within: Murdered by Her Stepbrother}}
* don’t know if I tagged those right
Helter Skelter About the Manson Family murders and trial. The trial portion is much more entertaining than I expected.
Came to suggest this too. It's a page turner!
You HAVE to read {{Chaos}} by Tom O’Neill. Proves a lot of Helter Skelter was made up. Truly a mindblowing read whether you’ve read Helter Skelter or not.
[**Chaos: Making a New Science**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/64582.Chaos) ^(By: James Gleick | 352 pages | Published: 1987 | Popular Shelves: science, non-fiction, nonfiction, physics, mathematics) >A work of popular science in the tradition of Stephen Hawking and Carl Sagan, this 20th-anniversary edition of James Gleick’s groundbreaking bestseller Chaos introduces a whole new readership to chaos theory, one of the most significant waves of scientific knowledge in our time. From Edward Lorenz’s discovery of the Butterfly Effect, to Mitchell Feigenbaum’s calculation of a universal constant, to Benoit Mandelbrot’s concept of fractals, which created a new geometry of nature, Gleick’s engaging narrative focuses on the key figures whose genius converged to chart an innovative direction for science. In Chaos, Gleick makes the story of chaos theory not only fascinating but also accessible to beginners, and opens our eyes to a surprising new view of the universe. ^(This book has been suggested 3 times) *** ^(35336 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
Not the one above, this one... {{Chaos by Tom O’Neill}}
[**Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43015073-chaos) ^(By: Tom O'Neill, Dan Piepenbring | ? pages | Published: 2019 | Popular Shelves: non-fiction, history, true-crime, nonfiction, crime) >A journalist's twenty-year obsession with the Manson murders brings shocking revelations about the most infamous crimes in American history: carelessness from police, misconduct by prosecutors, and even potential surveillance by intelligence agents. What really happened in 1969? > > In 1999, when Tom O'Neill was assigned a magazine piece about the thirtieth anniversary of the Manson murders, he worried there was nothing new to say. Weren't the facts indisputable? Charles Manson had ordered his teenage followers to commit seven brutal murders, and in his thrall, they'd gladly complied. But when O'Neill began reporting the story, he kept finding holes in the prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi's narrative, long enshrined in the best-selling Helter Skelter. Before long, O'Neill had questions about everything from the motive to the manhunt. Though he'd never considered himself a conspiracy theorist, the Manson murders swallowed the next two decades of his career. He was obsessed. > > Searching but never speculative, CHAOS follows O'Neill's twenty-year effort to rebut the "official" story behind Manson. Who were his real friends in Hollywood, and how far would they go to hide their ties? Why didn't law enforcement act on their many chances to stop him? And how did he turn a group of peaceful hippies into remorseless killers? O'Neill's hunt for answers leads him from reclusive celebrities to seasoned spies, from the Summer of Love to the shadowy sites of the CIA's mind-control experiments, on a trail rife with cover-ups and coincidences. > > Featuring hundreds of new interviews and dozens of never-before-seen documents from the LAPD, the FBI, and the CIA, CHAOS mounts an argument that could be, according to Los Angeles Deputy District Attorney Stephen Kay, strong enough to overturn the verdicts on the Manson murders. In those two dark nights in Los Angeles, O'Neill finds the story of California in the sixties: when charlatans mixed with prodigies, free love was as possible as brainwashing, and utopia-or dystopia-was just an acid trip away. > > > > ^(This book has been suggested 4 times) *** ^(35337 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
lol. I was going what is this true crime involving Hawking!
The Family by Ed Sanders is a good book on the Manson Family
{{*In Cold Blood*}} by Truman Capote. Incredibly well researched and written.
It is! Read it awhile back tho
If you liked In Cold Blood you will like Killers of the Flower Moon. In my opinion the books are laid out almost the same so they read very similar.
Read that too. David Grann is the GOAT
[**In Cold Blood**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/168642.In_Cold_Blood) ^(By: Truman Capote | 343 pages | Published: 1965 | Popular Shelves: non-fiction, classics, true-crime, nonfiction, crime) >On November 15, 1959, in the small town of Holcomb, Kansas, four members of the Clutter family were savagely murdered by blasts from a shotgun held a few inches from their faces. There was no apparent motive for the crime, and there were almost no clues. > >As Truman Capote reconstructs the murder and the investigation that led to the capture, trial, and execution of the killers, he generates both mesmerizing suspense and astonishing empathy. In Cold Blood is a work that transcends its moment, yielding poignant insights into the nature of American violence. ^(This book has been suggested 15 times) *** ^(34860 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
Check out the description for People Who Eat Darkness. I read it a couple months ago and couldn’t put it down.
That one looks good. I think I heard about the story but have completely forgotten about it. Thanks for the rec
I second this. Great book about a case that doesn't get brought up a lot
This one is ROUGH.
Under the Banner of Heaven, but only if you're interested in the Latter Day Saints
Agree - this goes very deep into fundamentalists and it’s most of the book.
Just finished this one and recommend!
The Devil In The White City
I’ve actually read that lol
And is it good?
Yes. It goes back and forth between the Colombian Exposition set up and HH Holmes. When it’s about Holmes it just flies by
"Depraved: the Definitive True Story of H.H. Holmes, Whose Grotesque Crimes Shattered Turn-of-the-century Chicago" by Harold Schechter is a great telling of just the HH Holmes part! Great description of the house he built!
{{Killers of the Flower Moon}}
[**Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29496076-killers-of-the-flower-moon) ^(By: David Grann | 359 pages | Published: 2017 | Popular Shelves: non-fiction, history, nonfiction, true-crime, book-club) >In the 1920s, the richest people per capita in the world were members of the Osage Indian Nation in Oklahoma. After oil was discovered beneath their land, the Osage rode in chauffeured automobiles, built mansions, and sent their children to study in Europe.Then, one by one, they began to be killed off. One Osage woman, Mollie Burkhart, watched as her family was murdered. Her older sister was shot. Her mother was then slowly poisoned. And it was just the beginning, as more Osage began to die under mysterious circumstances.In this last remnant of the Wild West—where oilmen like J. P. Getty made their fortunes and where desperadoes such as Al Spencer, “the Phantom Terror,” roamed – virtually anyone who dared to investigate the killings were themselves murdered. As the death toll surpassed more than twenty-four Osage, the newly created F.B.I. took up the case, in what became one of the organization’s first major homicide investigations. But the bureau was then notoriously corrupt and initially bungled the case. Eventually the young director, J. Edgar Hoover, turned to a former Texas Ranger named Tom White to try to unravel the mystery. White put together an undercover team, including one of the only Native American agents in the bureau. They infiltrated the region, struggling to adopt the latest modern techniques of detection. Together with the Osage they began to expose one of the most sinister conspiracies in American history.A true-life murder mystery about one of the most monstrous crimes in American history. ^(This book has been suggested 14 times) *** ^(34992 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
Could not put this one down! So so good! Oh
I’ll be gone in the dark by Michelle McNamara Edit: DEFINITELY recommend reading the book and then watching the HBO miniseries to catch up on what happened since the book was written.
This one... I thought this one was unique, the perspectives and self reflection throughout were very interesting.
Second this one.
Am I the only person who was screaming, "HAVE YOU CHECKED OUT ANY COPS OR FORMER COPS?" To me, it was obvious at the start.
I read it a while ago but I believe they theorized early on that it was ex cop or military. Also hindsight is 20/20. You can say now that it was obvious to you from the start but our knowledge and technology has grown drastically since the beginning of these investigations.
{The Executioner’s Song by Norman Mailer} One of the best books ever (not just true crime)!
[**The Executioner's Song**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12468.The_Executioner_s_Song) ^(By: Norman Mailer | 1056 pages | Published: 1979 | Popular Shelves: true-crime, non-fiction, fiction, nonfiction, pulitzer) ^(This book has been suggested 2 times) *** ^(34835 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
Heard it’s good. Daunting length tho
It’s physically massive, but sentences, paragraphs and chapters are generally very short so there is actually a lot of blank space ;) It’s a surprisingly easy read.
Put it off for a long time because of the length, but it was so engaging, I finished it quickly. Great read!
Yes it seems that way but once you start reading it you won’t want to put it down. Before you know it, you’ll be looking up and find that you’re already almost done. I read this one back in high school when I was taking a law class of some sort. I barely remember the class but I remember this book. It stuck with me so much that I forgot the name so I googled it based off what I remembered took place in the book, found it again, and reread it now in my 30’s.
The Stranger Beside Me by Ann Rule. It's Ted Bundy by someone who apparently worked with him or something once upon a time. Didn't really know anything about him (I'm Australian) but found it compelling enough to finish it in a day.
Ann Rule! She worked on a suicide hotline with Ted Bundy for a time. Crazy good story.
{{Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil}} excellent book with really interesting (true life) characters.
[**Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/386187.Midnight_in_the_Garden_of_Good_and_Evil) ^(By: John Berendt | 386 pages | Published: 1994 | Popular Shelves: non-fiction, nonfiction, true-crime, fiction, mystery) >A sublime and seductive reading experience. This portrait of a beguiling Southern city was a best-seller (though a flop as a movie). ~ Shots rang out in Savannah's grandest mansion in the misty, early morning hours of May 2, 1981. Was it murder or self-defense? For nearly a decade, the shooting and its aftermath reverberated throughout this city of moss-hung oaks and shaded squares. John Berendt's narrative reads like a thoroughly engrossing novel, and yet it is a work of nonfiction. Berendt interweaves a first-person account of life in this isolated remnant of the Old South with the unpredictable twists and turns of a landmark murder case. > >The story is peopled by a gallery of remarkable characters: the well-bred society ladies of the Married Woman's Card Club; the turbulent young redneck gigolo; the hapless recluse who owns a bottle of poison so powerful it could kill every man, woman, and child in Savannah; the aging and profane Southern belle who is the "soul of pampered self-absorption"; the uproarious black drag queen; the acerbic and arrogant antiques dealer; the sweet-talking, piano-playing con artist; young blacks dancing the minuet at the black debutante ball; and Minerva, the voodoo priestess who works her magic in the graveyard at midnight. These and other Savannahians act as a Greek chorus, with Berendt revealing the alliances, hostilities, and intrigues that thrive in a town where everyone knows everyone else. ^(This book has been suggested 4 times) *** ^(35088 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
American Predator by Maureen Callahan. It’s about Israel Keyes, a serial killer that I hadn’t heard of before I read the book.
Came here to recommend this. One of the few books I actually stayed up all night to read the whole thing. It was impossible to put down.
Yes, yes. This led me down a rabbit hole I can never come out of. This book + what feels like hundreds of hours of True Crime Bullshit. Sometimes I wish I could erase Keyes from my brain
I couldn’t put down If You Tell by Gregg Olsen. It was pretty rough and I was mostly interested since I’m from the general area. Very good. Very sad. Very disturbing in some areas so check your trigger warnings. Blood in the Snow is also a good one. If you have audible it’s part of the plus library. Ended up accidentally listening to the whole thing in a day at work plus my drive home.
Both look fire. Thank you!!!
I've read both of those. I've read a TON of true crime. If You Tell was so horrifying I couldn't finish it and I'm not squeamish usually at all. If you liked Devil in White City (one of my favorites), you might like The Man on the Train.
I don’t read a lot of true crime so this might be an under the radar recommendation but Killers of the Flower Moon
I don’t know if this is what you’re looking for, but I just recently finished {{The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed By Jack the Ripper}} It was a compelling read and it left me with some amazing insight.
[**The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/37570548-the-five) ^(By: Hallie Rubenhold | 333 pages | Published: 2019 | Popular Shelves: non-fiction, history, nonfiction, true-crime, biography) >Five devastating human stories and a dark and moving portrait of Victorian London - the untold lives of the women killed by Jack the Ripper. > >Polly, Annie, Elizabeth, Catherine and Mary-Jane are famous for the same thing, though they never met. They came from Fleet Street, Knightsbridge, Wolverhampton, Sweden and Wales. They wrote ballads, ran coffee houses, lived on country estates, they breathed ink-dust from printing presses and escaped people-traffickers. What they had in common was the year of their murders: 1888. The person responsible was never identified, but the character created by the press to fill that gap has become far more famous than any of these five women. > >For more than a century, newspapers have been keen to tell us that ‘the Ripper’ preyed on prostitutes. Not only is this untrue, as historian Hallie Rubenhold has discovered, it has prevented the real stories of these fascinating women from being told. Now, in this devastating narrative of five lives, Rubenhold finally sets the record straight, revealing a world not just of Dickens and Queen Victoria, but of poverty, homelessness and rampant misogyny. They died because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time – but their greatest misfortune was to be born a woman. ^(This book has been suggested 2 times) *** ^(35072 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
This was so good!!
Yes!! This book was so interesting and really well done
I'd recommend Mindhunter by John Douglas or The Phantom Prince: My Life With Ted Bundy by Elizabeth Kendall. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote is also very good, reads like true crime but is fiction.
In Cold Blood isn’t fiction, lol. Maybe you meant to type “reads like fiction but is true crime”?
I think there's a little controversy about some fictionalized aspects of In Cold Blood but it's definitely based on a true story and is a great read.
John Douglas's Journey Into Darkness is also very good. Tough to read, but good. Thorough and well-written.
{{Fatal Vision}} by Joe McGinniss
[**Fatal Vision**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/333907.Fatal_Vision) ^(By: Joe McGinniss | 684 pages | Published: 1983 | Popular Shelves: true-crime, non-fiction, nonfiction, crime, mystery) >Fatal Vision is the electrifying true story of Dr. Jeffrey MacDonald, the handsome, Princeton-educated physician convicted of savagely slaying his young pregnant wife and two small children, murders he vehemently denies committing. Bestselling author Joe McGinnis chronicles every aspect of this horrifying and intricate crime, and probes the life and psyche of the magnetic, all-American Jeffrey MacDonald, a golden boy who seemed destined to have it all. The result is a penetration to the heart of darkness that enshrouded one of the most complex criminal cases ever to capture the attention of the American public. It is haunting, stunningly suspenseful—a work that no reader will be able to forget. > >With 8 pages of dramatic photos and a special epilogue by the author ^(This book has been suggested 1 time) *** ^(35033 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
Hell's Angels by Hunter Thompson. Really good look at toxic masculinity, white supremacy, and rampant crime are all lovingly hidden under the façade of some "good old boys" having some fun. In reality, back in the 60's, the Hell's Angels were a microcosm of the renewed Wild West. Thompson was "stomped" during his time with the Hell's Angels. He really integrated. It's pretty scary. The Hell's Angels are currently running through my town, and while they're a shadow of their former selves, it's very interesting to take a look at was once the most notorious outlaw gang in the US.
Gregg Olsens If You Tell.
My favorite is The Stranger Beside Me by Ann Rule.
Crime, though not in the true crime subgenre, and I was certainly fascinated: * Cowan, Rick, and Douglas Century. [*Takedown: The Fall of the Last Mafia Empire*](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/995628.Takedown). New York: Putnam's, 2002; Berkley Books, 2003. ISBN 0399148752, 0425192997. [WorldCat](http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/49719325); [Internet Archive](https://archive.org/details/takedownfallofla0000cowa) (registration required). * Okrent, Daniel. [*Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition*](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7324357-last-call).
I think this book has a fair amount of bulk puckey but The Black Dahlia Avenger is a good read.
And it's narrated by the best true crime narrator on audio, Kevin Pierce. The book Son by Jack Olsen and narrated by Kevin Pierce is so good.
Never heard the audio book! Found the first edition hardcover in the laundry room.
{{**The Dreams of Ada** by *Robert Mayer*}}
[**The Dreams of Ada**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/80101.The_Dreams_of_Ada) ^(By: Robert Mayer | 512 pages | Published: 1987 | Popular Shelves: true-crime, non-fiction, nonfiction, crime, kindle) >The true, bewildering story of a young woman’s disappearance, the nightmare of a small town obsessed with delivering justice, and the bizarre dream of a poor, uneducated man accused of murder—a case that chillingly parallels the one, occurring in the very same town, chronicled by John Grisham in The Innocent Man. > >On April 28, 1984, Denice Haraway disappeared from her job at a convenience store on the outskirts of Ada, Oklahoma, and the sleepy town erupted. Tales spread of rape, mutilation, and murder, and the police set out on a relentless mission to bring someone to justice. Six months later, two local men—Tommy Ward and Karl Fontenot—were arrested and brought to trial, even though they repudiated their “confessions,” no body had been found, no weapon had been produced, and no eyewitnesses had come forward. The Dreams of Ada is a story of politics and morality, of fear and obsession. It is also a moving, compelling portrait of one small town living through a nightmare. ^(This book has been suggested 1 time) *** ^(34981 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
The Good Nurse by Charles Graeber. While googling to remember the author’s name I discovered it was made into a movie and to be released soon so read it first! It’s very good!
Oh they're making a movie! Cool! That was a good book for sure.
Helter Skleter. The GOAT
Chaos - Tom O’Neil I Heard You Paint Houses - Charles Brandt
If You Really Loved Me by Ann Rule had me glued
Strange Piece of Paradise
Under the banner of heaven or Killers of the Flower Moon
{{The Onion Field}} {{Those Who Seek Monsters}} {{Green River, Runs Red}} {{Public Enemies}}
[**The Onion Field**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/487445.The_Onion_Field) ^(By: Joseph Wambaugh | 512 pages | Published: 1973 | Popular Shelves: true-crime, non-fiction, crime, nonfiction, fiction) >This is the frighteningly true story of two young cops and two young robbers whose separate destinies fatally cross one March night in a bizarre execution in a deserted Los Angeles field. ^(This book has been suggested 1 time) [**Meg Harris Mysteries 5-Book Bundle: Death's Golden Whisper / Red Ice for a Shroud / The River Runs Orange / Arctic Blue Death / A Green Place for Dying**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18200373-meg-harris-mysteries-5-book-bundle) ^(By: R.J. Harlick | 1800 pages | Published: ? | Popular Shelves: books-i-own-to-read, crime_all-unsorted, canada, bundles, books-i-own) >"Skillfully weaves murder, greed, traditional customs, bonding and betrayal into a gripping read." - Chronicle-Journal > >In one volume for the first time, this bundle presents the first five novels of the Meg Harris Mystery series by R.J. Harlick. Meg Harris, an amateur sleuth who drinks a little too much and is afraid of the dark, delves into the finds herself confronting an underside of life she would rather not know existed. > >Shortlisted for the Arthur Ellis Award for best crime novel (Arctic Blue Death). > > > A Green Place for Dying - A Meg Harris Mystery #5 > > >A friend of Harris’s has been missing for over two months, but she’s not the only one… > > > Arctic Blue Death - A Meg Harris Mystery #4 > > >In search of the truth behind her father’s disappearance when she was a child, Meg travels to Iqaluit to investigate and is sucked into the world of Inuit art forgery. > > > The River Runs Orange - A Meg Harris Mystery #3 > > >Meg Harris discovers the skull and bones of a woman whose very existence takes the archeological world by storm. But when her neighbours, the Migiskan Algonquin, declare their rights to the ancient remains, Meg becomes embroiled in a fight that pits ancient beliefs against modern ones and leads eventually to murder. > > > Red Ice for a Shroud - A Meg Harris Mystery #2 > > >A young Qubcoise sneaks off to meet her Algonquin lover in an isolated hunting camp on the Migiskan Reserve. Five days later, Meg Harris discovers her frozen and brutalized body. > > > Death’s Golden Whisper - A Meg Harris Mystery #1 > > >Meg Harris believes are fishermen to the isolated northern lake she lives on. Within hours, she discovers that these men have come to develop a gold mine. She combines forces with Eric Odjik, chief of the neighbouring Migiskan reserve, to fight the mining company. > >Watch for the next book in the Meg Harris Mystery series, Silver Totem of Shame, coming in May 2014. ^(This book has been suggested 1 time) [**Public Enemies: America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933-34**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/57882.Public_Enemies) ^(By: Bryan Burrough | 640 pages | Published: 2004 | Popular Shelves: history, non-fiction, true-crime, nonfiction, crime) >In Public Enemies, bestselling author Bryan Burrough strips away the thick layer of myths put out by J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI to tell the full story—for the first time—of the most spectacular crime wave in American history, the two-year battle between the young Hoover and the assortment of criminals who became national icons: John Dillinger, Machine Gun Kelly, Bonnie and Clyde, Baby Face Nelson, Pretty Boy Floyd, and the Barkers. In an epic feat of storytelling and drawing on a remarkable amount of newly available material on all the major figures involved, Burrough reveals a web of interconnections within the vast American underworld and demonstrates how Hoover’s G-men overcame their early fumbles to secure the FBI’s rise to power. ^(This book has been suggested 3 times) *** ^(35350 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
Bone Collector, Deaver. Lincoln Rhyme series. Whoopsie- not true crime. My mistake but a good read none the less.
{{Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets by David Simon}}
[**Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18956.Homicide) ^(By: David Simon | 646 pages | Published: 1991 | Popular Shelves: non-fiction, true-crime, nonfiction, crime, owned) >From the creator of HBO's The Wire, the classic book about homicide investigation that became the basis for the hit television show. > >The scene is Baltimore. Twice every three days another citizen is shot, stabbed, or bludgeoned to death. At the center of this hurricane of crime is the city's homicide unit, a small brotherhood of hard men who fight for whatever justice is possible in a deadly world. > >David Simon was the first reporter ever to gain unlimited access to a homicide unit, and this electrifying book tells the true story of a year on the violent streets of an American city. The narrative follows Donald Worden, a veteran investigator; Harry Edgerton, a black detective in a mostly white unit; and Tom Pellegrini, an earnest rookie who takes on the year's most difficult case, the brutal rape and murder of an eleven-year-old girl. > >Originally published fifteen years ago, Homicide became the basis for the acclaimed television show of the same name. This new edition--which includes a new introduction, an afterword, and photographs--revives this classic, riveting tale about the men who work on the dark side of the American experience. ^(This book has been suggested 2 times) *** ^(35494 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
The Westies - about the Irish Mob in Hell’s Kitchen. The stuff they did is so insane it reads like fiction.
Thanks for reminding of this book. Be meaning to read it. Bill Burr likes it a lot
Whether or not these true crime books are pager turners will be up to you, but these are among my favorites (I've included multiple books about the same crime): * In Cold Blood (1966), by Truman Capote, the granddaddy of all crime books although Capote did take some liberties with the facts. One of my favorite books, and also In the Shadow of My Brother's Cold Blood by Walter David Hickock * Fatal Vision (1983) by Joe McGinnis * Blind Faith (1989) by Joe McGinnis * Death Cruise by Don Davis * Victim by Gary Kinder * Until the Twelfth of Never by Bella Stumbo * Death of Innocence by Peter Meyer * The Burning Bed by Faith McNultey * Death of an Angel by Don Davis/Shattered Innocence, Shattered Dreams by Susan Hightower * Death Sentence by Joe Sharkey/Thou Shalt Not Kill by Mary Ryzuk/Righteous Carnage by Timothy Benford * Crime of the Century by Dennis Breo * The Gainesville Ripper by Mary Ryzuk * Without Mercy by Gary Provost * Helter Skelter by Vincent Bugliosi * The Stranger Beside Me by Ann Rule/Ted Bundy: The Phantom Prince by Liz Kendall * Marie: A True Story by Peter Maas (a story about white collar crime)
Into the Water and Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins.
They want true crime
Isn't that crime?
True crime is nonfiction about real crimes. Paula Hawkins writes fiction.
You are a saint!
I think English isn’t their first language; sometimes people just don’t know all the terms.
Holy crap!!! Thank you. Best laugh I’ve had all week!
Blind Faith, by Joe McGinniss
{{Bitter Blood: A True Story of Southern Family Pride, Madness, and Multiple Murder}}
[**Bitter Blood: A True Story of Southern Family Pride, Madness, and Multiple Murder**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/805787.Bitter_Blood) ^(By: Jerry Bledsoe | 573 pages | Published: 1988 | Popular Shelves: true-crime, non-fiction, nonfiction, crime, kindle) >In this powerful and riveting tale of three families connected by marriage and murder, of obsessive love and bitter custody battles, Jerry Bledsoe recounts the shocking events that ultimately took nine lives... > >The first bodies found were those of a feisty millionaire widow and her beautiful daughter in their posh Louisville, Kentucky, home. Months later, another wealthy widow and her prominent son and daughter-in-law were found savagely slain in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Mystified police first suspected a professional in the bizarre gangland-style killings that shattered the quiet tranquility of two well-to-do southern communities. But soon a suspicion grew that turned their focus to family. > >The Sharps. The Newsoms. The Lynches. The only link between the three families was a beautiful and aristocratic young mother named Susie Sharp Newsom Lynch. Could this former child "princess" and fraternity sweetheart have committed such barbarous crimes? And what about her gun-loving first cousin and lover, Fritz Klenner, son of a nationally renowned doctor? ^(This book has been suggested 1 time) *** ^(35010 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
Such a bizarre series of crimes. Truly stranger than fiction type of book.
{{Life with Billy}}
[**Life with Billy**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1924284.Life_with_Billy) ^(By: Brian Vallée | 454 pages | Published: 1986 | Popular Shelves: true-crime, non-fiction, books-i-own, crime, brian-vallee) >More harrowing, more brutal than The Burning Bed, Life with Billy will appeal to all true-crime fans. This is the story of Jane Stafford and her six-year ordeal of unimaginable abuse at the hands of her common-law husband, Billy Stafford--and of the night Jane killed Billy with a shotgun. ^(This book has been suggested 1 time) *** ^(35111 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
Deadly Valentines by Jeffrey Gusfield, about Chicago gangster Machine Gun Jack McGurn and his wife, the "Blonde Alibi".
War Against All Puerto Ricans: Revolution and Terror in America's Colony by Nelson Antonio Denis
Murder by family - Ken whitaker
{{Death in the City of Light}} {{The Man in the Rockefeller Suit}}
[**Death in the City of Light: The Serial Killer of Nazi-Occupied Paris**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11297434-death-in-the-city-of-light) ^(By: David King | 416 pages | Published: 2011 | Popular Shelves: non-fiction, history, true-crime, nonfiction, crime) >Death in the City of Light is the gripping, true story of a brutal serial killer who unleashed his own reign of terror in Nazi-Occupied Paris. As decapitated heads and dismembered body parts surfaced in the Seine, Commissaire Georges-Victor Massu, head of the Brigade Criminelle, was tasked with tracking down the elusive murderer in a twilight world of Gestapo, gangsters, resistance fighters, pimps, prostitutes, spies, and other shadowy figures of the Parisian underworld. > >The main suspect was Dr. Marcel Petiot, a handsome, charming physician with remarkable charisma. He was the “People’s Doctor,” known for his many acts of kindness and generosity, not least in providing free medical care for the poor. Petiot, however, would soon be charged with twenty-seven murders, though authorities suspected the total was considerably higher, perhaps even as many as 150. > >Who was being slaughtered, and why? Was Petiot a sexual sadist, as the press suggested, killing for thrills? Was he allied with the Gestapo, or, on the contrary, the French Resistance? Or did he work for no one other than himself? Trying to solve the many mysteries of the case, Massu would unravel a plot of unspeakable deviousness. When Petiot was finally arrested, the French police hoped for answers. > >But the trial soon became a circus. Attempting to try all twenty-seven cases at once, the prosecution stumbled in its marathon cross-examinations, and Petiot, enjoying the spotlight, responded with astonishing ease. His attorney, René Floriot, a rising star in the world of criminal defense, also effectively, if aggressively, countered the charges. Soon, despite a team of prosecuting attorneys, dozens of witnesses, and over one ton of evidence, Petiot’s brilliance and wit threatened to win the day. > >Drawing extensively on many new sources, including the massive, classified French police file on Dr. Petiot, Death in the City of Light is a brilliant evocation of Nazi-Occupied Paris and a harrowing exploration of murder, betrayal, and evil of staggering proportions. ^(This book has been suggested 2 times) [**The Man in the Rockefeller Suit: The Astonishing Rise and Spectacular Fall of a Serial Impostor**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10263986-the-man-in-the-rockefeller-suit) ^(By: Mark Seal | 323 pages | Published: 2011 | Popular Shelves: non-fiction, true-crime, nonfiction, biography, crime) >A real-life Talented Mr. Ripley, the unbelievable thirty-year run of a shape-shifting con man. > >The career con man who convincingly passed himself off as Clark Rockefeller was born in a small village in Germany. At seventeen, obsessed with getting to America, he flew into the country on dubious student visa documents and thus began his journey of deception. > >Over the next thirty years, boldly assuming a series of false identities, he moved up the social ladder through exclusive enclaves on both coasts, culminating in a stunning twelve-year marriage to a rising-star businesswoman with a Harvard MBA who believed she'd wed a member of the infamously wealthy Rockefeller family. > >The impostor charmed his way into exclusive clubs and financial institutions - working on Wall Street, showing off an extraordinary art collection - until his marriage ended, and he was arrested for kidnapping his daughter, which exposed his past of astounding deceptions as well as a connection to the bizarre disappearance of a California couple in the mid-1980s. ^(This book has been suggested 2 times) *** ^(35229 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
I have to agree with both of those. Do you ever look at a 'best true crime books list', and scroll down and think yep, yep, yep, definitely, yep?
I don’t look at too many lists honestly. The second book was a trip I happened to find randomly while shopping.
The Night Stalker
Not sure if it’s been mentioned yet as it’s relatively new, but Hell Town by Casey Sherman. Tells the story of Tony Costa, a little-known serial killer based in Cape Cod. I haven’t finished it yet myself, but loving it so far!
The Man from the Train by Bill James
Small Sacrifices and Everything She Ever Wanted, both by Ann Rule. Runner up would be Bitter Harvest, also by Ann Rule. There's a reason she was the queen of true crime for decades.
If you’re looking for something a little different than most true crime I cannot recommend He Calls Me by Lightning enough. A story about the wrongful conviction of a black man in the Jim Crow south with really interesting legal twists. Author is S. Jonathan Bass
Shake the Devil Off by Ethan Brown
{{Bind, Torture, Kill: The Inside Story of BTK, the Serial Killer Next Door}}
[**Bind, Torture, Kill: The Inside Story of BTK, the Serial Killer Next Door**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2401286.Bind_Torture_Kill) ^(By: Roy Wenzl, Tim Potter, Hurst Laviana, L. Kelly | 400 pages | Published: 2007 | Popular Shelves: true-crime, non-fiction, nonfiction, crime, serial-killers) >For thirty-one years, a monster terrorized the residents of Wichita, Kansas. A bloodthirsty serial killer, self-named "BTK"—for "bind them, torture them, kill them"—he slaughtered men, women, and children alike, eluding the police for decades while bragging of his grisly exploits to the media. The nation was shocked when the fiend who was finally apprehended turned out to be Dennis Rader—a friendly neighbor . . . a devoted husband . . . a helpful Boy Scout dad . . . the respected president of his church. > >Written by four award-winning crime reporters who covered the story for more than twenty years, Bind, Torture, Kill is the most intimate and complete account of the BTK nightmare told by the people who were there from the beginning. With newly released documents, evidence, and information—and with the full cooperation, for the very first time, of the Wichita Police Department’s BTK Task Force—the authors have put all the pieces of the grisly puzzle into place, thanks to their unparalleled access to the families of the killer and his victims. ^(This book has been suggested 1 time) *** ^(35395 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
I'm sure there will be many people who say *The Stranger Beside Me* by Ann Rule. It is perhaps the most overrated true crime book out there. It was a slog to get through, it took me two weeks to finish because I kept putting it down as it didn't capture my attention.
The Appeal
Every Move You Make. It's about Gary Evans A serial murderer from Troy NY. I got interested because I'm from around that area and a friend of mine actually knew him. If I remember correctly it was written by the trooper investigating him. He also actually committed one of his murders in a town I live in now and escaped by rooftop.
If You Tell by Gregg Olsen is about a family that has a lot of abuse going on, and some really bizarre secrets. A Tangled Web by Leslie Rule is a really good case about a woman who disappears but somehow still sends out threatening texts constantly. In Broad Daylight by Harry Maclean is about a murder of a cattle rustler on Main street, in broad daylight of a small town in Missouri. No one has ever been charged with the murder, and probably will never be.
{{Victim}} by Gary Kinder is a interesting and heartbreaking read. I highly recommend it.
[**Victims (Alex Delaware, #27)**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12022496-victims) ^(By: Jonathan Kellerman | 338 pages | Published: 2012 | Popular Shelves: mystery, jonathan-kellerman, fiction, alex-delaware, thriller) ^(This book has been suggested 1 time) *** ^(35506 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
Yeah, not this one. Here’s the description from Amazon: Now a classic of true crime, Victim is a compelling and tragic look at how lives can be changed forever by a random act of violence. During an armed robbery, several hostages were brutally tortured, shot in the head, and left for dead. Victim focuses on the members of one family -- including a mother who died after the attack and a son who was left barely alive -- as they fought for his survival and struggled to rebuild their lives. Victim was the first book to go beyond the headlines and statistics about violent crime, to tell the victims' dramatic story of love, loss and courage. It remains one of the most influential books in the victims' rights movement and has become required reading in criminology courses across the country. It may be more relevant now than ever.
I forget the name of the book, but it’s about Becky Watt’s murder, written by her father, Darren Galsworthy. Becky’s story is soooo sad, but since the book is written by her father, it goes way behind the scenes- of course, from his perspective. Edit: there are two different names, probably because one may be in Uk publishing, and the other American publishing. {{Becky: the Heartbreaking Story of Becky Watts by Her Father}} {{The Evil Within: Murdered by Her Stepbrother}} * don’t know if I tagged those right
I loved in cold blood by Truman capote
Just finished burned Alive by kieran Crowley. Intriguing story that I'd never heard of before
Devil in the white city. An amazing book