Non Fiction:Suggest books based on True Crimes

[Dave329]

What are good books on this topic?Like books on serial killers,real heists,art thieves,famous murders,kidnappings,white collar crimes etc even historical crimes,ship piracy etc

[crich70]

Ann Rule's "The Stranger Beside Me" comes to mind. It's about the hunt for the serial killer who turned out to be Ted Bundy.

[Dr. Drib]

Anything by Ann Rule.

I love her books.

[SteveEisenberg]

The most memorable, for me, are not about one specific crime:

Michael Capuzzo, The Murder Room: The Heirs of Sherlock Holmes Gather to Solve the World's Most Perplexing Cold Cases
David Kennedy, Don’t Shoot: One Man, A Street Fellowship, and the End of Violence in Inner-City America

Art crime:

Robert Wittman, Priceless: How I Went Undercover to Rescue the World's Stolen Treasures
Laney Salisbury and Aly Sujo, Provenance: How a Con Man and a Forger Rewrote the History of Modern Art

Check out Jeff Guinn on Manson and Bonnie & Clyde.

Also often a good read, as well as important, are books on false convictions, like Wells and Leo, The Wrong Guys: Murder, False Confessions, and the Norfolk Four.

[darryl]

One that stands out for me is an oldie but a goodie, Joseph Wambaugh's "Echoes in the Darkness". An excellent account written with biting sarcasm about the hunt for the killers of a woman and her two young children. Buried Dreams: Inside the Mind of a Serial Killer by Tim Cahill is one of many books about the infamous serial killer, John Wayne Gacy. I read it many years ago but one passage that particularly stands out is towards the end of the book when Gacy's is in his lawyers office late at night. The lawyer is so scared by what he is being told that he asks Police waiting outside who were following Gacy to come in and wait in the office.

[Catlady]

The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher, by Kate Summerscale, about a child murder in England in 1860; and Ann Rule's Small Sacrifices, about a mother who shot her three children.

[Graham]

My wife's recommended:

The Executioner's Song, by Norman Mailer, about Gary Gilmore.

Killing for Company, by Brian Masters, which is about Dennis Neilsen.

Beyond Belief, by Emlyn Williams, which is about the Moors Murders.

Helter Skelter, by Vincent Bugliosi, about Charles Manson.

Graham

[Dazrin]

Originally Posted by crich70

Ann Rule's "The Stranger Beside Me" comes to mind. It's about the hunt for the serial killer who turned out to be Ted Bundy.

Agreed, it is the only one of her's that I have read, but is very good.

[Catlady]

Truman Capote's In Cold Blood.

[crich70]

Originally Posted by Dazrin

Agreed, it is the only one of her's that I have read, but is very good.

The odd thing about it is that she was contracted to write the book while they were still trying to discover who the killer was, and she had worked along side Bundy at a suicide hotline.

[SteveEisenberg]

Originally Posted by Catlady

Truman Capote's In Cold Blood.

There's been lots of discussion about the extent to which that one is non-fiction:

http://blogs.reuters.com/jackshafer/...e-capote-myth/

[Dr. Drib]

Also, if you enjoy reading Ann Rule, try M. William Phelps.

[Dave329]

Originally Posted by crich70

Ann Rule's "The Stranger Beside Me" comes to mind. It's about the hunt for the serial killer who turned out to be Ted Bundy.

Is that a spoiler or are we supposed to know?

[Dr. Drib]

Originally Posted by Dave329

Is that a spoiler or are we supposed to know?

I can't imagine anyone who doesn't know that.

[Dazrin]

Originally Posted by Dave329

Is that a spoiler or are we supposed to know?

She also mentions it in the prologue of the book (or at least in her introductory information), so it isn't giving away anything that won't be known very early in the reading.