In his forthcoming work, The Scandalous Hamiltons: A Gilded Age Grifter, a Founding Father’s Disgraced Descendant, and a Trial at the Dawn of Tabloid Journalism (Citadel Press, 2022), author Bill Shaffer recounts the riveting true tale that captured the attention of American newspaper readers from coast to coast during the final decade of the nineteenth …
Author: indextruecrime
The Women’s House of Detention by Hugh Ryan
Hugh Ryan’s new social history, The Women’s House of Detention: A Queer History of a Forgotten Prison, is one of the most important books published this year. Equal parts true crime, queer artifact, American history, and societal critique, The Women’s House of Detention (Bold Type Books 2022) is a must-read. Ryan’s book details the history …
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Unmasked by Paul Holes
As one of the most anticipated true crime releases of 2022, Paul Holes’ new true crime memoir, Unmasked, is an unflinching look inside the career of one of the most well-known figures in true crime and popular culture. Holes’ memoir recounts some of the most famous and harrowing moments in his career alongside events in …
Murder by the Book by Claire Harman
Both true crime enthusiasts and Victorian literature lovers alike will want to read Claire Harman’s Murder by the Book: The Crime that Shocked Dickens’s London (Knopf, 2019), which provides equal helpings of salacious criminals and well-known literary figures. Centered around the murder of aged statesman Lord William Russell in May 1840, Harman traces the criminal …
Snake Eyes by Bitty Martin
Snake Eyes: Murder in a Southern Town by Bitty Martin (Rowan & Littlefield 2022) is a straightforward and classic example of true crime that focuses on a little-known case, beginning in 1960s Arkansas, and the complex people and events that led to its resolution years later. Martin’s book begins with the sudden and shocking death …
Shadowman by Ron Franscell
Shadowman: An Elusive Psycho Killer and the Birth of FBI Profilingby Ron Franscell (Berkley Books 2022) was an expertly paced and thoroughly researched true crime book about a strange and tragic series of crimes and the early days of FBI profiling that had me on the edge of my seat until the very end. Franscell’s …
Scoundrel by Sarah Weinman
Sarah Weinman’s Scoundrel: How a Convicted Murderer Persuaded the Women Who Loved Him, the Constative Establishment, and the Courts to Set Him Free (Knopf 2022) tells the wild tale of Edgar Smith, a man who was convicted of the 1957 murder of fifteen-year-old Victoria Zielinski and was sentenced to death. Smith, however, was never put …
The Wicked Boy by Kate Summerscale
In her award-winning book The Wicked Boy: An Infamous Murder in Victorian London (Penguin Books, 2017), Kate Summerscale provides a vivid narrative of the life of Robert Allen Coombes, who at age thirteen murdered his mother in her sleep. Born in 1882, Coombes and his younger brother Nattie spent most of their childhood in the …
A Taste for Poison by Neil Bradbury
Neil Bradbury’s new book, A Taste for Poison: Eleven Deadly Molecules and the Killers Who Used Them, is a fascinating and fresh take on true crime narrative forms. Rather than just recount the stories of killers who murder by poisoning, Bradbury shifts the focus to the substances themselves. Across eleven sections, accompanied by a helpful …
The Prince, The Princess, and the Perfect Murder by Andrew Rose
True crime lovers and royal history fans alike need look no further than The Prince, The Princess, and the Perfect Murder: The First Great Love of Edward VIII’s Life, the Sensational Consequences, and the Establishment Cover Up (Coronet, 2013) by Andrew Rose for a book that combines both. Before he became King Edward VIII in …
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