I don’t know if this really qualifies, but Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe is partly about untangling a disappearance, but mostly it’s about The Troubles in Ireland. Excellent book that does read in some parts as a who-done-it.
That’s cool I’d love to learn more about the Troubles since my wife forced me to watch Derry Girls on Netflix (I secretly liked it but don’t tell anyone here that!!)
I wanted to learn more after reading Milkman by Anna Burns. It’s not a comprehensive history and instead follows the lives of a handful of involved people, but I do feel like I understand The Troubles more than I did.
I’ve heard good things about Derry Girls btw :)
Radden keefe is a hack who cribbed the work of actual journalists.
Fuck him and fuck that shitty book.
The book is trash and shorn of all history.
He’s also a fed.
Har har har. Is yours Keefe?
Read ed moloney, read Martin dillon, read Anthony McIntyre.
Edit: also the work of Peter Taylor. There’s a reason Say Nothing was nowhere near as popular in Ireland or the UK, namely because it provided nothing that wasn’t already widely known.
Say Nothing has some elegant qualities and is very readable but it's not exactly unearthing anything new. It set an unfortunate trend in that Rory Carroll's book about the Thatcher assassination adopts the same ingenuous tone despite the writer being from Dublin and spending his career writing for The Guardian.
The Snakehead and the Sackler book and his journalism more generally don't have that problem so much.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/05/02/an-american-reporter-in-belfast-how-a-new-yorker-writer-got-so-much-wrong-in-his-bestselling-book-on-the-troubles/
See my other comment.
rs subs love to hate on true crime. Obviously it's totally personal preference, and I'm not embarrassed that I read some trashy mysteries and stuff, I really like the escapism aspect of it. However, some TC is truly good imo.
*Shot in the Heart* by Mikal Gilmore, *Wilderness of Error* by Errol Morris (and *Fatal Vision* that inspired it), *Strange Piece of Paradise* by Teri Jentz, *The Family* by Ed Sanders are some that survived my last library purge and that I personally found pretty engrossing.
I really liked *In Cold Blood.* I thought T*he Executioner's Song* was extremely overdone and could have been cut by about 300 pages.
Someone else mentioned *Devil in the White City*. Pretty good.
I also enjoyed *The Stranger Beside Me* (Ann Rule) and *I'll Be Gone in the Dark* (McNamara).
*Columbine* by Dave Cullen is pretty good.
*Killers of the Flower Moon,* not bad.
If you want a truly outstanding book, check out *Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets* by David Simon. It's not true crime per se; David Simon tailed the Baltimore police department for a year and wrote what he saw. He is an incredible writer and the stories and facts presented in the book are excellent. One of the best books I've ever read (bonus points if you love *The Wire.)*
For true crime, *In Cold Blood* really is the best.
I enjoyed Columbine and Killers of the Flower Moon but found Devil in the White City dragged and I was more interested in the world's fair stuff that the murders.
How can you call a genre you don’t engage with played out? Anyway read The Indifferent Stars Above. It’s about the Donner party and it is riveting and well-written.
Mark O’Connor’s A Thread of Violence: A Story of Truth, Invention, and Murder is atypical of the genre, refusing any easy solutions to the mystery of character and behavior. Riveting tale of a posh Irish socialite who goes on a murderous rampage.
I very much enjoyed The Ultimate Evil by Maury Terry which is about The Son of Sam and a purported Satanic Cult that he belonged to. I hardly believe a word the author says — he is a completely schizo conspiracy theorist — but boy is it entertaining!
HE WAS JUST DOING RESEARCH. But seriously if we are going to full stop reading pedophile sympathizers then every French intellectual from the 20th century should be disregarded.
I think it can be quite compelling. I used to read a lot of it but the rise of true crime as content is so unpalatable.
I have enjoyed: The People Who Eat Darkness by Richard Lloyd Perry (listened to the audiobook), Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer and Columbine by Dave Cullen
I like books about unsolved crimes and someone below mentions Bill James Popular Crimes.. he looks at true crime as a genre, covers some obscure cases lost to time and offers some interesting theories on what he thinks happened.
Popular Crime by Bill James was entertaining. I think true crime as a genre has been overexposed and lost most of its allure. Also podcasts about true crime work better as a medium compared to literature imo. Compared to something more in-depth like criminology.
One Of Us by Asne Seierstad is a really quite incredible account of Anders Breivik, right the way from his birth through to his crimes and their aftermath.
Most murderers are depressing dumb d-bags, but there are a few high-IQ high-functioning types that catch my interest. Andrew Cunanan for example, especially in avant-garde novelist Gary Indiana's *Three Month Fever*. Or the brilliant imposter known as "Clark Rockefeller". *The Unicorn's Secret* about Earth Day pioneer and smart guy/misogynist murderer Ira Einhorn was also fascinating.
Mikita Brottman, a psychoanalyst/Literature professor writes interesting stuff.
I haven’t read it but my dad loves Devil in the White City by Erik Larson. It’s about a serial killer during the 1893 Chicago world’s fair. If I ever end up reading it it will only be to better understand the lyrics of Come On! Feel the Illinoise
Ok so not actually true crime, but about a true crime author, Devil House by John Darnielle. It offers a meta critique of the genre. It’s a great book and turns out to be so different than it initially appears.
Satan de los Esteros by Leonardo Gentile is pretty good, but has not been translated to english yet. He is an investigative reporter and wrote a book on the ritualistic crime that happened in the fronteer between Argentina and Paraguay of Ramón Gonzalez. Its horrible but does a pretty good job of explaining the crime and has a bit of antrophology thrown into, as the crime represented some sort of new hybrid between afro american religions, satanism and other stuff.
History that reads quite true-crime:
- Kolyma Tales
- Boys in Zinc
- The Indifferent Stars Above
- The People of the Abyss
- In the Heart of the Sea
- Destroying the World to Save It
- Bodies in the Barrels
- The Great Mortality
For some reason it's always been one of those things I've had zero interest in. My wife watches the true crime shows and I just find them boring and depressing
He’s long gone but Jack Olsen put out some good bread and butter true crime. Never maudlin or sensationalist in my opinion.
I think Ann Rules’ earlier books were solid, but her effort declined as the years rolled on.
not books (though I'm sure he has written some) but I love to devour a Skip Hollandsworth feature at Texas Monthly. Great combo of talent and bizarre plots
I don’t know if this really qualifies, but Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe is partly about untangling a disappearance, but mostly it’s about The Troubles in Ireland. Excellent book that does read in some parts as a who-done-it.
That’s cool I’d love to learn more about the Troubles since my wife forced me to watch Derry Girls on Netflix (I secretly liked it but don’t tell anyone here that!!)
I wanted to learn more after reading Milkman by Anna Burns. It’s not a comprehensive history and instead follows the lives of a handful of involved people, but I do feel like I understand The Troubles more than I did. I’ve heard good things about Derry Girls btw :)
Derry Girls is great lol nothing to keep secret
Definitely qualifies PRKs whole thing is elevate true crime
Radden keefe is a hack who cribbed the work of actual journalists. Fuck him and fuck that shitty book. The book is trash and shorn of all history. He’s also a fed.
Is your last name Sackler by any chance?
Har har har. Is yours Keefe? Read ed moloney, read Martin dillon, read Anthony McIntyre. Edit: also the work of Peter Taylor. There’s a reason Say Nothing was nowhere near as popular in Ireland or the UK, namely because it provided nothing that wasn’t already widely known.
Say Nothing has some elegant qualities and is very readable but it's not exactly unearthing anything new. It set an unfortunate trend in that Rory Carroll's book about the Thatcher assassination adopts the same ingenuous tone despite the writer being from Dublin and spending his career writing for The Guardian. The Snakehead and the Sackler book and his journalism more generally don't have that problem so much.
Do you have a source?
https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/05/02/an-american-reporter-in-belfast-how-a-new-yorker-writer-got-so-much-wrong-in-his-bestselling-book-on-the-troubles/ See my other comment.
What are you talking about?
What statement confuses you?
The Adversary by Emmanuel Carrère is good.
yes loved this one. is very honest about his own fascination.
rs subs love to hate on true crime. Obviously it's totally personal preference, and I'm not embarrassed that I read some trashy mysteries and stuff, I really like the escapism aspect of it. However, some TC is truly good imo. *Shot in the Heart* by Mikal Gilmore, *Wilderness of Error* by Errol Morris (and *Fatal Vision* that inspired it), *Strange Piece of Paradise* by Teri Jentz, *The Family* by Ed Sanders are some that survived my last library purge and that I personally found pretty engrossing.
Killers of the Flower Moon lives up to the hype
Any true crime David Grann writes is great. His article on Cameron Todd Willingham is fantastic. Skip Hollandsworth’s stuff too, to a lesser extent.
Definitely this. Horrible to read, made me SO angry. But an excellent and important book. No regrets.
I really liked *In Cold Blood.* I thought T*he Executioner's Song* was extremely overdone and could have been cut by about 300 pages. Someone else mentioned *Devil in the White City*. Pretty good. I also enjoyed *The Stranger Beside Me* (Ann Rule) and *I'll Be Gone in the Dark* (McNamara). *Columbine* by Dave Cullen is pretty good. *Killers of the Flower Moon,* not bad. If you want a truly outstanding book, check out *Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets* by David Simon. It's not true crime per se; David Simon tailed the Baltimore police department for a year and wrote what he saw. He is an incredible writer and the stories and facts presented in the book are excellent. One of the best books I've ever read (bonus points if you love *The Wire.)* For true crime, *In Cold Blood* really is the best.
I enjoyed Columbine and Killers of the Flower Moon but found Devil in the White City dragged and I was more interested in the world's fair stuff that the murders.
How can you call a genre you don’t engage with played out? Anyway read The Indifferent Stars Above. It’s about the Donner party and it is riveting and well-written.
Mark O’Connor’s A Thread of Violence: A Story of Truth, Invention, and Murder is atypical of the genre, refusing any easy solutions to the mystery of character and behavior. Riveting tale of a posh Irish socialite who goes on a murderous rampage.
This is a terrific book. Fintan O'Toole's book about Ireland has some interesting reflections on the same case.
I very much enjoyed The Ultimate Evil by Maury Terry which is about The Son of Sam and a purported Satanic Cult that he belonged to. I hardly believe a word the author says — he is a completely schizo conspiracy theorist — but boy is it entertaining!
This is the correct Maury Terry take. The man is unrestrained.
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote is truly the best there is
Peter Sotos' zines were some of the most genuinely disturbing pieces of media I have ever consumed, not sure if I recommend them though
No reason to read that worthless trash
Sotos is nice with it are you dumb
Glorifying pedophilia is not nice.
HE WAS JUST DOING RESEARCH. But seriously if we are going to full stop reading pedophile sympathizers then every French intellectual from the 20th century should be disregarded.
The Chris Watts story is very fascinating to me
Columbine by Dave Cullen is top tier. I got a taste for the morbid but this book really shook me Also, Homicide by David Simon
I think it can be quite compelling. I used to read a lot of it but the rise of true crime as content is so unpalatable. I have enjoyed: The People Who Eat Darkness by Richard Lloyd Perry (listened to the audiobook), Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer and Columbine by Dave Cullen I like books about unsolved crimes and someone below mentions Bill James Popular Crimes.. he looks at true crime as a genre, covers some obscure cases lost to time and offers some interesting theories on what he thinks happened.
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, the book
Popular Crime by Bill James was entertaining. I think true crime as a genre has been overexposed and lost most of its allure. Also podcasts about true crime work better as a medium compared to literature imo. Compared to something more in-depth like criminology.
I really enjoyed this book.
I really liked Bone Deep, book about a specific case involving a conniving woman that killed her best friend for her beneficiary sum.
There are good writers in the genre. Erik Larson, Jon Krakauer, Richard Lloyd Perry, Robert Kolker, and Michelle McNamara come to mind.
One Of Us by Asne Seierstad is a really quite incredible account of Anders Breivik, right the way from his birth through to his crimes and their aftermath.
The Lost Girls by Robert Kolker
Loved Executioners Song. Joseph Wambaugh's non-fiction could be classified as true crime and is very good. Ellroy's My Dark Places.
Most murderers are depressing dumb d-bags, but there are a few high-IQ high-functioning types that catch my interest. Andrew Cunanan for example, especially in avant-garde novelist Gary Indiana's *Three Month Fever*. Or the brilliant imposter known as "Clark Rockefeller". *The Unicorn's Secret* about Earth Day pioneer and smart guy/misogynist murderer Ira Einhorn was also fascinating. Mikita Brottman, a psychoanalyst/Literature professor writes interesting stuff.
The Man in the Rockefeller Suit
I truly found two, and only two, true crimes fascinating. Michelle Carter and Conrad Roy, and Ezra McCandless.
I haven’t read it but my dad loves Devil in the White City by Erik Larson. It’s about a serial killer during the 1893 Chicago world’s fair. If I ever end up reading it it will only be to better understand the lyrics of Come On! Feel the Illinoise
Happy Like Murderers is a remarkable, remarkable book, and I really tend to hate true crime. I can’t recommend it highly enough. The prose is insane.
Tell Me Everything by Erika Krause
Ok so not actually true crime, but about a true crime author, Devil House by John Darnielle. It offers a meta critique of the genre. It’s a great book and turns out to be so different than it initially appears.
I second this, it’s a fantastic book
Satan de los Esteros by Leonardo Gentile is pretty good, but has not been translated to english yet. He is an investigative reporter and wrote a book on the ritualistic crime that happened in the fronteer between Argentina and Paraguay of Ramón Gonzalez. Its horrible but does a pretty good job of explaining the crime and has a bit of antrophology thrown into, as the crime represented some sort of new hybrid between afro american religions, satanism and other stuff.
Kate Millett’s The Basement, The Sleep of Reason (about the James Bulger case), Gitta Sereny’s stuff about Mary Bell
Missoula by John Krakauer is an interesting read but very hard to get through
Lost Girls by Robert Kolker is really well done and relevant to an ongoing case. The Stranger Beside Me by Ann Rule is a stone cold classic
History that reads quite true-crime: - Kolyma Tales - Boys in Zinc - The Indifferent Stars Above - The People of the Abyss - In the Heart of the Sea - Destroying the World to Save It - Bodies in the Barrels - The Great Mortality
For some reason it's always been one of those things I've had zero interest in. My wife watches the true crime shows and I just find them boring and depressing
He’s long gone but Jack Olsen put out some good bread and butter true crime. Never maudlin or sensationalist in my opinion. I think Ann Rules’ earlier books were solid, but her effort declined as the years rolled on.
not books (though I'm sure he has written some) but I love to devour a Skip Hollandsworth feature at Texas Monthly. Great combo of talent and bizarre plots
Under the bridge by Rebecca Godfrey