Book #92 of 2024: While Idaho Slept: The Hunt for Answers in the Murders of Four College Students by J. Reuben Appelman This true-crime title is pretty slim, despite how much time author J. Reuben Appelman spends on describing the victims’ backstories. He painstakingly walks through the police bodycam footage from when officers were called …
Tag Archives: true crime
Book Review: Among the Bros: A Fraternity Crime Story by Max Marshall
Book #38 of 2024: Among the Bros: A Fraternity Crime Story by Max Marshall One part ethnographic history of the modern American college fraternity scene; one part true-crime reporting of a million-dollar benzodiazepine ring that operated within that ecosystem at the College of Charleston in South Carolina. To lay out my biases, I was active …
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Book Review: What the Dead Know: Learning About Life as a New York City Death Investigator by Barbara Butcher
Book #14 of 2024: What the Dead Know: Learning About Life as a New York City Death Investigator by Barbara Butcher A morbidly fascinating look at an unusual job, but a bit too bogged down in unrelated asides on author Barbara Butcher’s personal life, especially near the end. (A little bit of memoir in such …
Book Review: Two Truths and a Lie: A Murder, a Private Investigator, and Her Search for Justice by Ellen McGarrahan
Book #134 of 2023: Two Truths and a Lie: A Murder, a Private Investigator, and Her Search for Justice by Ellen McGarrahan In 1990, reporter Ellen McGarrahan witnessed the state of Florida’s botched execution of death-row inmate Jesse Tafero. (The electric chair sparked and caught fire, ultimately taking seven minutes and three separate jolts to …
Book Review: I Know Who You Are: How an Amateur DNA Sleuth Unmasked the Golden State Killer and Changed Crime Fighting Forever by Barbara Rae-Venter
Book #58 of 2023: I Know Who You Are: How an Amateur DNA Sleuth Unmasked the Golden State Killer and Changed Crime Fighting Forever by Barbara Rae-Venter Author Barbara Rae-Venter is a retired patent lawyer who in recent years has found a new career in the burgeoning field of genetic genealogical research, and specifically its …
Book Review: The Stranger Beside Me: The Shocking Inside Story of Serial Killer Ted Bundy by Ann Rule
Book #173 of 2022: The Stranger Beside Me: The Shocking Inside Story of Serial Killer Ted Bundy by Ann Rule I sometimes have difficulty rating pieces of nonfiction, but my general principle is to weigh a work against the best possible version of itself, by asking what the author is trying to accomplish and how …
Book Review: From a Whisper to a Rallying Cry: The Killing of Vincent Chin and the Trial that Galvanized the Asian American Movement by Paula Yoo
Book #292 of 2021: From a Whisper to a Rallying Cry: The Killing of Vincent Chin and the Trial that Galvanized the Asian American Movement by Paula Yoo An informative account of the titular 1982 assault and how it led to more widespread recognition of racial discrimination against Asian Americans, as well as a greater …
Book Review: We Keep the Dead Close: A Murder at Harvard and a Half Century of Silence by Becky Cooper
Book #71 of 2021: We Keep the Dead Close: A Murder at Harvard and a Half Century of Silence by Becky Cooper Struck by a lingering campus legend that she heard as a Harvard undergrad, author Becky Cooper began digging into the forty-year-old unsolved murder at its heart, sorting the facts from the mythic stature …
Book Review: American Predator: The Hunt for the Most Meticulous Serial Killer of the 21st Century by Maureen Callahan
Book #292 of 2020: American Predator: The Hunt for the Most Meticulous Serial Killer of the 21st Century by Maureen Callahan I like how this true-crime book tells its story mostly as the authorities learned it, building gradually from a 2012 missing persons report to presumption of foul play and the arrest of a suspect …
Book Review: The Blood of Emmett Till by Timothy B. Tyson
Book #131 of 2020: The Blood of Emmett Till by Timothy B. Tyson An informative account of the famous 1950s lynching case, including a rare interview with the white woman who accused the black fourteen-year-old of whistling at her and new details from a recovered courtroom transcript of the subsequent trial of his murderers. The …
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