The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher by Kate Summerscale 

Later made into a popular British miniseries of the same name, Kate Summerscale’s The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective (Bloomsbury, 2009) delivers an intensely thorough analysis of a real 1860 murder case that had a profound impact in Britain. On the morning of 30 June 1860, it …

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Roll Red Roll by Nancy Schwartzman

Roll Red Roll: Rape, Power, and Football in the American Heartland (Hachette Books 2022) by Nancy Schwartzman was a title that was immediately intriguing to me because I had seen the feature documentary Roll Red Roll (2018), directed and produced by Schwartzman. The documentary, like the book, depicts a rape committed, filmed, photographed, and posted on the internet by …

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22 Murders by Paul Palango

Paul Palango’s 22 Murders: Investigating the Massacres, Cover-Up, and Obstacles to Justice in Nova Scotia (Random House Canada 2022) is an extremely detailed account of the mass murder of twenty-two people in the most unlikely of places: Portapique, Nova Scotia. The perpetrator, Gabriel Wortman, was on the loose for twelve hours, shooting rural Nova Scotia residents in …

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Bone Deep by Charles Bosworth Jr. & Joel J. Schwartz 

Charles Bosworth Jr. and Joel J. Schwartz’s Bone Deep: Untangling the Betsy Faria Murder Case (Kensington 2022) is a classic true crime tale of murder, intrigue, suspicion, and wrongful conviction. The book is fast-paced, and the case is shocking: Betsy Faria was brutally murdered in her home and discovered by her husband, Russ. Russ is suspected of …

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Boys Enter the House by David Nelson

In David Nelson’s 2021 book Boys Enter the House: The Victims of John Wayne Gacy and the Lives they Left Behind (Chicago Review Press) the text begins with an illuminating author’s note, one wherein Nelson explains the terms he uses throughout the book, the way the interviews were conducted and complied, and most importantly, what his intentions …

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Catch the Sparrow by Rachel Rear

Rachel Rear’s Catch the Sparrow: A Search for a Sister and the Truth of her Murder (Bloomsbury, 2022) tells the complex and devastating story of Stephanie Kupchynsky’s 1991 disappearance and murder. Rear grew up in Greece, New York, and was fourteen when Stephanie went missing. She remembers the case well and spends many poignant passages in the book discussing …

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