Last week, I picked up Simon Baatz’s For the Thrill of It: Leopold, Loeb, and the Murder that Shocked Jazz Age Chicago. For those not familiar with the case, Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb were two University of Chicago students who killed a fourteen-year-old boy named Bobby Franks in 1924. Published last year, For the Thrill of It tells the story from the brutal murder to the apprehension of Leopold and Loeb to the much-publicized trial (the men were defended by renowned attorney Clarence Darrow).
True crime is a thrilling subject for a book--what better medium to use to ponder, explore and try to get to the heart of a killer’s motives? The genre is incredibly popular--go to any bookstore, and you’ll find a whole section devoted to it, and a search for “true crime books” at Amazon.com produces pages and pages of results.
Books about true crime often hit the bestseller lists. Ann Rule’s The Stranger Beside Me recounted Ted Bundy’s crimes from a unique perspective: Rule met Bundy in Seattle in 1971 and became friends with him. Rule is perhaps the best-known name in the true crime genre, having penned over two dozen true crime books, including entries on The Green River Killer and The I-5 killer.
Erik Larson perhaps isn’t a name associated with true crime per se, but his nonfiction tends to pair a big historical event--like the Chicago World’s Fair or the invention of the telegraph--with the tale of a real-life killer. In The Devil in the White City, he explored the twisted killings of H. H. Holmes, which took place in the shadow of the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, while in Thunderstruck, he recounted Hawley Crippen’s murder of his wife and flight with his mistress--and how the telegraph brought him down.
Those are a few of my favorite true crime books--what are yours?
True crime is a thrilling subject for a book--what better medium to use to ponder, explore and try to get to the heart of a killer’s motives? The genre is incredibly popular--go to any bookstore, and you’ll find a whole section devoted to it, and a search for “true crime books” at Amazon.com produces pages and pages of results.
Books about true crime often hit the bestseller lists. Ann Rule’s The Stranger Beside Me recounted Ted Bundy’s crimes from a unique perspective: Rule met Bundy in Seattle in 1971 and became friends with him. Rule is perhaps the best-known name in the true crime genre, having penned over two dozen true crime books, including entries on The Green River Killer and The I-5 killer.
Erik Larson perhaps isn’t a name associated with true crime per se, but his nonfiction tends to pair a big historical event--like the Chicago World’s Fair or the invention of the telegraph--with the tale of a real-life killer. In The Devil in the White City, he explored the twisted killings of H. H. Holmes, which took place in the shadow of the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, while in Thunderstruck, he recounted Hawley Crippen’s murder of his wife and flight with his mistress--and how the telegraph brought him down.
Those are a few of my favorite true crime books--what are yours?
