I’ve always been a fan of true crime. Whether it’s because of my ma’s influence or my own natural predilections for the macabre, I’ve long been drawn to tales of serial killers and criminal fiends; their psychologies unraveled in gristly mental vivisections that mirror the sadistic dismemberments perpetrated during their own crimes. However, last year I descended rapidly and deeply into the genre and read over sixty different true crime books. I refuse to believe that I just went ahead and read that many books about crimes and criminals and criminal behaviors with nothing to show for it, but relentless cynicism. So, for those folks out there that are looking to dip their toes into the true crime genre, here’s my short list to help get you started.
I’ve thought a lot about how to break True Crime into distinct categories. I don’t think it’s unfair to say that when most people imagine a True Crime book, they envision the tawdry paperbacks you can find in grocery stores or airport newsstands with titles like Darling, Sweet, Darling: The Dissection Rapist of Cleveland or Stab Hunters: John Douglas’ Twenty-Third Book. However, there is more to True Crime than what I call the “Case Files.” True Crime can be divided into three categories: Case Files, Science and Sociology. Case Files break down the totality of a criminal case, usually focusing on a particular individual or organization, but this category can also include works that are anthologies of crimes.
Since I think this is the most popular category, I’ll start by talking about the best Case Files, and I will revisit the other two categories in a later entry. The Case Files are the books that are most likely to lurch into the tawdry, the mawkish and the grotesque. I also read a shit-ton of them. Around two-thirds of the books I read fell into this category, but only a small percentage of those are ones I would recommend to the True Crime Initiate.
Here’s the best of the ones I read last year:
On the Farm: Robert William Pickton and the Tragic Story of Vancouver’s Missing Women by Stevie Cameron
The best Case Files don’t just talk about their subject in isolation. They capture the criminal (or criminals) in their element, in the environment that bred them. Stevie Cameron does a phenomenal job of capturing the world around Robert Pickton, a pathetic man who survived on the edges of his brother’s criminal lifestyle and murdered dozens of women.
Cameron makes it clear that Pickton does not exist in a vacuum, that Pickton murdered and terrified as many women as he did through police inaction and political disdain for the victims, many of whom were sex workers.
It’s not just one of the best True Crime books I read last year, but one of the best books I read last year, fullstop. Cameron’s research is exacting and her writing is stunning and she delivers a truly haunting look into the world that Pickton lurked.
Doc: The Rape of the Town of Lovell by Jack Olsen
Without a doubt, my favorite True Crime writer is Jack Olsen. He writes clean prose about the crime, the criminals and the communities devastated by tragedy and loss. He tends to write about some truly unpleasant individuals and their very ugly crimes, though not usually people you might have heard about already. Doc: The Rape of the Town of Lovell is one such case.
Doctor John Story was a physician in Lovell, Wyoming who used his position to sexually assault many of his female patients. Olsen covers as much of the story as he is able, not focusing on the tawdry, sensational details of the crimes, but on the people hurt and affected by a scandal that wounded the town.
I genuinely don’t think you could do wrong by reading any of his books, but this particular book hit me particularly hard in terms of how much these crimes fractured the community.
Additionally, all of Olsen’s audiobooks are read by Kevin Pierce, who adds a gravelly gravitas to every book.
Steve Jackson covers some similar turf as Jack Olsen, at least in terms of the types of criminals and how he approaches telling the story. I would say that Jackson comes in more on the side of law enforcement, while Olsen tended to go for a broader picture of the crime. That being said, Monster is a fantastic work by Jackson.
Monster follows the almost three decade long pursuit of Tom Luther, one of the more vicious killers and rapists I’ve read about. Luther’s winding path through Colorado, slipping through the criminal justice system to kill again, is intricately pieced back together by Jackson. The scale of the investigation is daunting and covers the efforts of numerous individuals, agencies and states as they try and bring Tom Luther to justice.
If you’ve read Olsen and you want something else in his vein, check out Steve Jackson’s Monster.
There’s a particular style of Case File that I’m especially fond of and it’s the historical Case File. I’m talking about serial killers and thieves and ne’er-do-wells from well before we had horseless carriages and Christian man rightly saw Edison’s wax cylinder as the Devil’s Tune Tube. These are cases that are at least 100 years old. Harold Schechter is the master(s) of this side-genre of True Crime, but I want to talk about the Benders.
For a True Crime book to really work for me, I like to know the whole world in which the crime took place. You need the context of the crime to understand how it happened, why it happened and how they eventually stopped it from happening. Jonusas does a great job of capturing the world in which the Bender family hunted, as they lay in wait for unwary travelers in frontier Kansas.
Those are just four of the sixty-some books I read last year, but a good place to start if you’re looking to dip your toe into True Crime. Yes, I know I didn’t mention Anne Rule, but if you’re surprised I didn’t mention her, you didn’t need me to recommend her in the first place.
I’ll be back soon with more True Crime recommendations, next time focusing in on the science behind how all these true crime criminals get caught.
Let me know other True Crime books you might recommend to a newcomer to the genre.
-D-
dylancharles.net 