Just saw your post about In Broad Daylight and I was wondering if you have any more true crime book recs? It's a genre I've been interested in lately but don't know where to start. (I've read Devil in the White City and all that fun stuff)
Well, the classic of course is Truman Capote’s “In Cold Blood” which is widely credited with launching the fledgling genre, but a) there is a lot of debate about the accuracy of his reporting and b) honestly? It’s not that great.
A lot of true crime suffers from the same issue biography does: you want to structure it as a narrative, with rising action and a climax, but most natural lives don’t have a climax. True Crime gets by a little on the idea of arrest = climax but that doesn’t always work super well.
Most of the true crime I read isn’t the traditional “horrible murders and how to stop them”. But I do have a list of books that I think you will enjoy if you also enjoy true crime:
The Burglary by Betty Medsger – this is about the burglary of the FBI offices in the 70s which led to a HUGE revision in the way the American public viewed the FBI. It’s not really true crime as much as it is political thriller but it does a great job telling the story of the breakin itself, and it also pulls back the veil on a lot of institutionalized racism enforced and fostered by the FBI.
The Gardner Heist by Ulrich Boser – not perhaps the definitive text on the Gardner heist, but certainly one of the better ones I’ve read.
The Napoleon Of Crime by Ben MacIntyre – A biography of Adam Worth, upon whom Arthur Conan Doyle based Professor Moriarty.
Titanic Thompson: The Man Who Bet Everything by Kevin Cook – a biography of one of America’s most infamous con men.
Cooked by Jeff Henderson – the autobiography of a crack dealer who became a gourmet chef after being sent to prison, including his struggles to overcome his past once he got out.
Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing by Ted Conover – Conover went undercover to become a prison guard at Sing Sing prison; this is his frequently scathing expose of the way the prison was run.
The Hare With Amber Eyes by Edmund de Waal – The history of one Jewish family’s encounter with Nazi looting before and during WWII, and how they recovered their treasured art.
Operation Mincemeat by Ben MacIntyre – Another WWII story, this time the story of one of the most daring confidence games of the war, where a dead man became a double agent.
The Rape of Europa by Lynn H. Nicholas – A very dense but fascinating book about art crime during WWII, covering most of the theatres of war and the formation of the Monuments Men. (If you want to ease into it there’s a brilliant documentary of the same name which last I checked was still on netflix.)
And finally, here is one nega-recommendation: Jack The Ripper: Case Closed by Patricia Cornwell. Don’t read it. It is hands down the shoddiest piece of “nonfiction” I’ve ever encountered. I mean if you want a chance to pick apart a really poorly constructed thesis, go for it, but it’s not worth your time. I still get angry about the poor quality of the scholarship a decade later.
