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Check it Out: True Crime

Submitted by B. Wood on

Night falls earlier. Days are shorter, leaving us in darkness for more of our time. It’s autumn in our part of the world, and there’s a reason why horror books and movies often take place in the fall.  

I scare much too easily to watch or read horror. I can’t even watch from under a blanket. But what I can and do read is true crime books. While the crimes in these books are every bit as horrible as those in horror fiction, they are usually recounted from a more scientific perspective, a somewhat dispassionate recounting - and that’s enough to hook me in but not affect my sleep. Horror stems from storytelling, whereas true crime is born of journalism.

True crime books are very popular, and the most well-known book may be In Cold Blood by Truman Capote. It ran as a serial story in The New Yorker weekly magazine before being published as a book in 1966. The best-selling true crime book of all time is Helter Skelter by Vincent Bugliosi. Helter Skelter, which details the Manson Family murders, was published in 1974.

Ann Rule is sometimes referred to as the queen of true crime, and she is probably the most recognized author in this genre. She published 35 books in 34 years before her death in 2015. Rule’s first book, The Stranger Beside Me, is about serial killer Ted Bundy - whom she met while both were working on a suicide hotline in Seattle in 1971. Many of Rule’s books cover cases from the Pacific Northwest.

Although Ann Rule’s chosen topic was serial killers, many true crime books don’t cover murder or, in some cases, cover a broader range of criminal behavior. Organized crime is popular, and Five Families: The Rise, Decline and Resurgence of America’s Most Powerful Mafia Empires by Selwyn Raab (2006) offers a well-written history of Mafia activity in America. Tinseltown Gangsters: The Rise and Decline of the Mob in Hollywood by Jeffrey Sussman(2024) is a colorful look at Mafia influence in the movie industry. The largest U.S. sting operation ever, which centered around use of a secure communications app, is spooled out in Dark Wire by Joseph Cox (2024). If it’s fraud that fascinates you, read Fool Me Once: Scams, Stories and Secrets from the Trillion-Dollar Fraud Industry by Kelly R. Pope (2023).

Here are a few of the newest (2024) true crime books acquired by the library:

New at the Library

Fiction

Nonfiction

Children

Backs for four children holding hands and walking away from the viewer into a woodland
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