The True Crime Genre

[candor]

I read the latest ( I think!) Ann Rule book this weekend, "Heart Full Of Lies". It was a good read and actually better than the last couple of her books I've read.

I got it in CD form for a long car trip last week. Excellent! I think I like Ann Rule because she finds fascinating criminal characters, people who are smart yet have no conscience, like the woman in this book.
Weird personalities are intriguing.
Speaking of, I forgot to mention one of the best true crime books I read in the last five years: "Son of a Grifter" about Sante Kimes and her son, who killed a rich woman in New York for her apartment building.
It was written by her normal son, who described what it was like to grow up with a con woman for a mother. Riveting.

[dawg]

Not sure if this quite fits, but The Executioners Song was a great book. It makes Gary Gilmore seem like a real person as opposed to a monster. (I think the fact that it takes place in Utah and I recognizes places helps.)

Wow ... I read this book years ago, and really liked it then. But I don't think I've read a true crime book since. See the occasional show on A&E - but that's it.

From all the suggestions here, looks like I'll have lots of reasons to be off the boards more.

[stark54]

You should check out Never the Same Again: A Rock n Roll Gothic, by Jesse Sublett, a musician/crime novelist & documentary writer from Austin, Texas. Sublett was just getting started in his music career in Austin in 1976 when his girlfriend was murdered by a serial killer. He came home from his first big gig in San Antonio and found her. Although shattered and suicidal, he stumbled through the next few years with the help of rock n roll to keep him going, then hooked up with another woman who helped save him from drowning in grief, flashbacks, booze and pills, and helped him get his own band going, the Skunks, which was a major band in the punk/new wave scene, although they never got a deal with a major label. Then in the mid eighties he started writing crime novels, featuring a bass playing guy in Austin named Martin Fender, who moonlights as a PI, and then Sublett moved to LA for 7 years then came back to Austin with his wife, Lois (the woman who saved him in the late 70s) and son, Dashiell, 6 months old, and in 97 learned he had a dire case of cancer of the neck with only 4 percent chance of survival. He made it, though, through extensive surgery, chemo and radiation, with the help of his music and his family, and by vowing to write a book about Dianne, his murdered girlfriend, and his music career and writing. He went back and investigated the murder, learned more awful truths about the killer and the way the case was handled, and nearly lost it.

It's a real roller coaster ride of a book. You'll cry through some parts -- they're so grim and sad -- and laugh thru many others, like the slapstick mishaps of his band on the road. If you like mysteries, true crime, or just a great read, check this book out.

[Teraisa1]

stark54--thanks for the head's up about Never the Same Again: A Rock n Roll Gothic. It sounds very interesting, definitely something I would like to pick up.

Teraisa

[gaby]

For some good reads, anything by Jack Olsen. An excellent storyteller - especially try "Doc".

I finally found the "Doc" book this summer... and it was a truly disturbing book. It made me incredibly sad for all those ladies with the Mormon church that he molested. And whats worse... good ole Doc was released from prison. And picked up his examining table from the Sheriff's department.

My main attraction to true crime is the story telling. I want to know the "why". And alot of crime writers are poor story tellers with explaining the back story. I want to know about who was killed and their life. I hate books that devote 90% of it to the killer, their life & too many chapters on the actual court case. Just get to the point.

With Ann Rule's books.... its a 50/50 thing if I will like them. I do recall Bitter Harvest being one of her better books.

Blood & Money by Tommy Thompson is from the 1970's... and worth locating. Evidence of Love by John Bloom and Jim Adkinson is one of the best written true crime books I have ever read. With the two main characters being 2 church going ladies in their late 20's... which one ends up dead at the hands of the other.... And the weapon was a AX. Plus the twist in the end will floor you. So worth reading...

[Teraisa1]

Yes, Jack Olson's books are great. He said he regretted not putting pictures in his earlier books, but the true crime genre was not that old and he felt great writers would not need pictures. I wish he were still around...


A Beautiful Child, by Matt Birkbeck, will be out soon, it's an excellent book, the writing is terrific and the story just tears at you, it could have easily have a different ending if only someone spoke up.

Also, Irene Pence's No, Daddy, Don't is incredible. It's misjustice and domestic violence at its' worst.

I don't like books with lengthy trials, though I love trials... I just love a story that reads easily and teaches me something.

Teraisa

[Dinahann]

My favorite book by Jack Olsen was Son: A Psychopath and His Victims, but I also liked Doc. I just find it sad that those poor Mormon women were so naive.

[KaiCee]

I love true crime...but it really does make a difference who does the writing. I just finished one written by one of the people involved in the crime. It was so bad! She made herself out to be this heroine -- and had some really nasty descriptions of unrelated body fluids....who needs to know just exactly what her vomit looked like? It was so bad that I threw it away when I finished it...normally I pass my finished books along to friends or charities. I have never thrown a book in the trash before...but this one was trash.

I like Ann Rule...I am going to pick up that book by Jack Olsen, it sounds really good. I got started on the true crime passion with Helter Skelter. I read it when I was a teenager. Anyone who likes true crime should read Helter Skelter at least one time.

[Teraisa1]

My feeling is that when someone from the crime writes -- or is paid for their story -- the story is never as good, and less objective. The few times the writing is good? When the story is about survival, rather than crime.

[Dinahann]

My feeling is that when someone from the crime writes -- or is paid for their story -- the story is never as good, and less objective. The few times the writing is good? When the story is about survival, rather than crime.

That's the whole point. The story becomes subjective because the person telling the story is trying to sell their viewpoint to you. I'd rather read a true crime written by someone who is neutral. They have no investment in the outcome - Just the facts, Ma'am.

I like survival stories too.