Books

50 essential true crime books

By Jessica Doyle 21 June, 2021

Published in 1966, Truman Capote's true crime book In Cold Blood details a brutal quadruple murder in small town Kansas. An instant success, the book launched the true crime genre that today consists of thousands of titles, television shows, films and even podcasts. Disturbing as the subject matter may be, true crime books (and the like) are a fascinating look into the human mind. We're compelled by our desire to understand how the criminal mind works, and can't help but wonder what we'd do in a similar situation. It's what makes true crime books one of the most popular non-fiction genres, and it certainly explains why we binge watch true crime documentaries like Making a Murderer and obsessively listen to true crime podcasts like My Favorite Murder and Serial.

There's no shortage of fascinating true crime books out there - this list of the 50 best true crime books only scratches the surface. How many have you read?

In Cold Blood

By Truman Capote

Controversial and compelling, In Cold Blood reconstructs the 1959 murder of a Kansas farmer and his family. Arguably the book that launched the True Crime genre.

Mindhunter: Inside the FBI's Elite Serial Crime Unit

By John E. Douglas

The author recounts some his most gruesome and challenging cases during his 25-year career with the FBI and its elite Investigative Support Unit.

Adnan's Story

By Rabia Chaudry

From the accused's family friend, a detailed account of the case that inspired the podcast Serial.

Who Killed These Girls? The Yogurt Shop Murders

By Beverly Lowry

The murder of four girls, countless other ruined lives, and the evolving complications of the justice system that frustrated the massive attempts to find and punish those who committed it.

Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI

By David Grann

Grann revisits a shocking series of crimes in which dozens of Osage people were murdered in cold blood.

The Road to Jonestown: Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple

By Jeff Guinn

A comprehensive, authoritative, and tragic story of preacher Jim Jones, who was responsible for the largest murder-suicide in American history.

Manson

By Jeff Guinn

Drawing on new information, bestselling author Jeff Guinn tells the definitive story of how this ordinary delinquent became a murderer.

The Executioner's Song

By Norman Mailer

In the summer of 1976 Gary Gilmore robbed two men. Then he shot them in cold blood. His execution turned into the most gruesome media event of the decade.

Shot in the Heart

By Mikal Gilmore

Gary Gilmore, the infamous murderer immortalized by Norman Mailer in The Executioner's Song, campaigned for his own death and was executed by firing squad in 1977. Writer Mikal Gilmore is his younger brother.

Devil in the White City

By Erik Larson

The true tale of the 1893 World's Fair and the cunning serial killer who used the fair to lure his victims to their death.

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

By John Berendt

A true story of intrigue, murder, forgery and eccentricity set in the steamy, surreal atmosphere of Savannah, Georgia.

Killings

By Calvin Trillin

These stories, which originally appeared in The New Yorker between 1969 and 2010, are vivid portraits of lives cut short.

The Stranger Beside Me

By Ann Rule

With a slow chill that intensifies with each heart-pounding page, Rule describes her dawning awareness that Ted Bundy, her sensitive coworker on a crisis hotline, was one of the most prolific serial killers in America.

Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders

By Vincent Bugliosi

Vincent Bugliosi was the prosecuting attorney in the Manson trial, and this book is his enthralling account of how he built his case.

Lucky: A Memoir

By Alice Sebold

The author of Lovely Bones reveals how her life was transformed when, as an 18-year-old college freshman, she was brutally raped and beaten in a park near campus.

Green River

By Ann Rule

The true story of a case involving more than 49 female victims and one unrelenting killer.

Zodiac: The Shocking True Story of the Hunt for the Nation's Most Elusive Serial Killer

By Robert Graysmith

Graysmith was on staff at the San Francisco Chronicle in 1969 when Zodiac first struck, triggering in the resolute reporter an unrelenting obsession with seeing the hooded killer brought to justice.

The Innocent Man: Murder and Injustice in a Small Town

By John Grisham

Impeccably researched, grippingly told, filled with eleventh-hour drama, John Grisham's first work of nonfiction reads like a page-turning legal thriller.

Popular Crime

By Bill James

An epic journey from Lizzie Borden to the Black Dahlia to O.J. Simpson, explaining how crimes have been committed, investigated, prosecuted and written about, and how that has profoundly influenced our culture over the last few centuries.

Portrait of a Killer

By Patricia Cornwell

Patricia Cornwell utilizes the demanding methods of modern forensic investigation to re-examine the evidence in the Jack the Ripper murders.

The Orchid Thief: A True Story of Beauty and Obsession

By Susan Orlean

The world of the orchid hunters, breeders and showmen and their crimes provide the backdrop to a fascinating exploration of one of the byways of human nature, the obsessive world of the collector, and the haunting beauty of the flowers themselves.

People Who Eat Darkness

By Richard Lloyd Parry

21-year-old Lucie Blackmantall stepped out into the vastness of Tokyo in the summer of 2000, and disappeared forever. The following winter, her dismembered remains were found buried in a seaside cave.

Forensics: The Anatomy of Crime

By Val McDermid

A journey through forensics takes us to war zones, fire scenes, and autopsy suites, revealing both extraordinary bravery and true wickedness, as we trace the history of forensics from its earliest beginnings to the cutting-edge science of the modern day.

A Death in Belmont

By Sebastian Junger

From the acclaimed author of A Perfect Storm comes a powerful chronicle of three lives that collide in the vortex of one of America's most controversial serial murder cases.

The Journalist and the Murderer

By Janet Malcolm

The story of the lawsuit between Jeffrey MacDonald, a convicted murderer, and Joe McGinniss, the author of a book about the crime.

Lost Girls: An Unsolved American Mystery

By Robert Kolker

Award-winning investigative reporter Robert Kolker delivers a haunting and humanising account of the true-life search for a serial killer still at large on Long Island, in a compelling tale of unsolved murder and Internet prostitution.

Devil's Knot: The True Story of the West Memphis Three

By Mara Leveritt

The most comprehensive, insightful reporting ever done on the investigation, trials, and convictions of three teenage boys who became known as the West Memphis Three.

A Long Walk Home

By Judith Tebbutt

Judith Tebbutt and her husband David set out on a holiday to Kenya - this is the story of how Judith was torn away from the life she knew at the hands of Somali pirates.

Under the Banner of Heaven

By Jon Krakauer

The story of an appalling double murder committed by two Mormon Fundamentalist brothers, Ron and Dan Lafferty, who insist they received a revelation from God commanding them to kill their blameless victims.

Gomorrah

By Roberto Saviano

Gomorrah is both a bold and engrossing piece of investigative writing and one heroic young man's impassioned story of a place under the rule of a murderous organisation.

For the Thrill of It

By Simon Baatz

It was a crime that shocked the nation, a brutal murder in Chicago in 1924 of a child, by two wealthy college students who killed solely for the thrill of the experience.

A Mind for Murder

By Alston Chase

This is a radically new interpretation of the life and motives of the infamous Unabomber.

The Last Victim

By Jason Moss

It started with a college course assignment, then escalated into a dangerous obsession. Eighteen-year-old honor student Jason Moss wrote to men whose body counts had made criminal history: men named Dahmer, Manson, Ramirez, and Gacy.

Truevine

By Beth Macy

The true story of two African-American brothers who were kidnapped and displayed as circus freaks, and whose mother endured a 28-year struggle to get them back.

American Heiress: The Wild Saga of the Kidnapping

By Jeffrey Toobin

The definitive account of the kidnapping and trial that defined an insane era in American history.

The Run of His Life: The People V

By Jeffrey Toobin

The whole story, from the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman to the ruthless gamesmanship behind the scenes of the trial of the century.

Murder in the Bayou

By Ethan Brown

Murder in the Bayou chronicles the twists and turns of a high-stakes investigation into the murders of eight women in a troubled Louisiana parish.

While the City Slept

By Eli Sanders

A Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter's gripping account of one young man's path to murder-and a wake-up call for mental health care in America.

A Daughter's Deadly Deception: The Jennifer Pan Story

By Jeremy Grimaldi

A sinister plot by a young woman left her mother dead and her father riddled with bullets.

Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic

By Sam Quinones

From a small town in Mexico to the boardrooms of Big Pharma, an explosive and shocking account of addiction and black tar heroin in the heartland of America.

American Fire: Love Arson and Life in a Vanishing Land

By Monica Hesse

The arsons started on a cold November midnight and didn't stop for months. Night after night, the people of Accomack County waited to see which building would burn down next, regarding each other at first with compassion, and later suspicion.

Bind, Torture, Kill

By Roy Wenzl

Written by four award-winning crime reporters who covered the story for more than 20 years, Bind, Torture, Kill is the most intimate and complete account of the BTK nightmare told by the people who were there from the beginning.

The Crime of the Century: Richard Speck and the Murders That Shocked a Nation

By Dennis L. Breo

On July 14th, 1966, Richard Franklin Speck swept through a quiet Chicago townhouse like a summer tornado and stabbed, strangled, and killed eight young nurses in a violent sexual rampage.

In the Garden of the Beasts

By Erik Larson

A stunning, eyewitness perspective on events in Berlin, 1933 as they unfold in real time, revealing an era of surprising nuance and complexity.

The CBS Murders

By Richard Hammer

Winner of the Edgar Award, a gripping account of a gruesome mass murder in gritty 1980s New York and the relentless hunt for a coldblooded killer.

Ripper: The Secret Life of Walter Sickert

By Patricia Cornwell

A comprehensive and intriguing exposé of one of the world's most chilling cases of serial murder and the police force that failed to solve it.

Death in the Air

By Kate Winkler Dawson

A gripping, historical narrative of a serial killer, an environmental disaster, and an iconic city struggling to regain its footing.

The Ultimate Evil

By Maury Terry

On August 10, 1977, the NYPD arrested David Berkowitz for the Son of Sam murders that had terrorized New York. Terry details the chilling events, proving that Berkowitz was an affiliate of - and triggerman for - a Satanic cult known as the Process Church of the Final Judgment.

Crossed Over: A Murder

By Beverly Lowry

Crossed Over is an intimate portrait of a life gone tragically awry and then redeemed behind bars.

A Wilderness of Error

By Errol Morris

In this profoundly original meditation on truth and the justice system, Errol Morris, a former private detective and director of The Thin Blue Line, delves deeply into the infamous Jeffrey MacDonald murder case.

50 essential true crime books

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