Call it morbid curiosity or a penchant for at-home detective work, but the world of true crime storytelling has somehow become an extremely popular form of entertainment in recent years.
Taking an interest in all things gruesome isn’t necessarily a new concept. Humans have been trading ghost stories, folklore, and warnings against things that go bump in the night since the dawn of time. Yet true crime storytelling offers a decidedly more harrowing version of horror than old wives’ tales.
Reading a fictional scary story is one thing, but the realisation that a real human being could commit the most heinous of acts in cold blood is a mind-boggling, disgusting, and yet entirely fascinating concept. Fans of the subject have faced criticism for their seemingly nonchalant ability to listen to true crime stories of kidnappings, murders, and extortion involving very real people while on their daily commute. However, we’re here to dispel the rumours surrounding the fact that taking an interest in true crime is an inherently disturbing character trait.
First and foremost, reading about true crime events which have occurred throughout history allows us to catch a glimpse of a particular societal moment, zeitgeist or political scenario in greater depth.
One of the most popular examples of this lies in the Manson Family murders of 1969. Tarantino’s 2019 film Once Upon A Time… in Hollywood indeed worked to paint a picture of the many popular cultural influences on Charles Manson.
However, Vincent Bugliosi and Curt Gentry’s 1974 non-fiction novel Helter Skelter provides a first-hand account of the investigation, arrest, and prosecution of Manson with unabridged detail, resulting in an almost time capsule-like product that can be delved into by behavioural scientists and amateur enthusiasts for decades to come.
Likewise, the infamous Jack the Ripper murders of 1888 are often used to illustrate what life was like for young, impoverished working women in Victorian England - both in terms of the dangers they faced, and the ways in which society failed them. These heinous acts have their place in history, both recent and seemingly ancient, and further allow us to delve deeper into the distressing human behaviours that lead a person to commit such monstrous acts.
From stories of cold-blooded murder to modern psychological conundrums, keep scrolling for eight of the best true crime novels of all time.
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In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
In Cold Blood is widely considered the greatest true crime novel of all time, despite being an inexplicable literary detour at the time of its release from the author of Breakfast at Tiffany’s, the famed Truman Capote.
Blending a high literary writing style imbued with emotional poeticism with the clinical documentation of evidence and transcriptions of Capote’s own meetings with the killers in question utterly transformed the way in which true crime was written for years to come.
Detailing the horrific murder of the Clutter family in Holcomb, Kansas in 1959, Capote’s non-fiction book is written like a fictional novel. In the first half, the author describes their idyllic small-town life before moving into the nature of the crime itself, the intricate psyches of the killers, and the concept of justice within the American system.
Buy now £9.19, Amazon
Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann
Set to become a major motion picture directed by Martin Scorsese and starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Killers of the Flower Moon tells the unexpected story of the birth of the FBI as we know it. Rather than honing in on the incredibly popular and endlessly interesting nature of criminal profiling and how it came to be, Grann’s novel focuses on a series of gruesome crimes committed against members of the Osage Native American tribe of Osage County, Oklahoma in the 1920s.
After discovering oil beneath their land, the Osage Nation became the richest people per capita in the world before being murdered, one by one, in cold blood. The FBI took over the investigation of the case to no avail, so its young director J Edgar Hoover enlisted the help of a former Texas Ranger named Tom White to uncover the mystery.
Buy now £7.49, Waterstones
The Executioner's Song by Norman Mailer
So, you’ve already devoured Capote’s In Cold Blood and you’re on a desperate hunt for a literary-style non-fiction novel that might make you feel the same way. Look no further than The Executioner’s Song by Norman Mailer.
After robbing and shooting two men in the summer of 1976, Gary Gilmore was sentenced to life imprisonment. However, Gilmore was desperate to die and pled for the death sentence in a lengthy battle with the local authorities that made an unexpected celebrity out of him. Mailer details this disturbing ordeal while delving into the psyche of Gilmore, and that of the wider American justice system, with poetic precision.
Buy now £14.99, Waterstones
Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe
The chilling story of the mega-wealthy and ultra-influential Sackler family and their role in modern America’s gut-wrenching opioid crisis, Keefe’s non-fiction novel follows three generations of the Sackler dynasty and their respective roles in the manufacture and subsequent marketing of two particular, addictive painkillers: Oxycontin and Valium.
Winner of the 2021 Baillie Gifford prize and one of Barack Obama’s favourite books of 2021, Empire of Pain is a journalistic marvel which delivers gut-wrenching revelations on the people and processes which created the life-destroying addiction crisis with gripping, yet wholeheartedly disturbing detail.
Buy now £20.00, Amazon
I'll Be Gone in the Dark by Michelle McNamara
Declared by Stephen King to be a “propulsive, can’t-stop-now” read, fanatics of all things horror and true crime may finally unite to read this thrilling page-turner. Published posthumously, McNamara’s novel is the culmination of a life-altering obsession with the crimes committed by the Golden State Killer.
Providing a fascinating glimpse into suburban life on the West Coast of America in the 1980s, sink into the culmination of decades of research and truth-searching resulting from the unsolved murder of Kathleen Lomardo, which occurred just two blocks away from McNamara’s childhood home.
Buy now £10.99, Waterstones
Savage Appetites by Rachel Monroe
A book written for female true crime fanatics in particular, Monroe’s text is an exploration of society’s fascination with all things gruesome and horrifying in an entirely unique manner. Monroe moves between four true crime stories about women driven to madness by obsession via four criminal roles: detective, victim, defendant, and killer.
A complete culmination of the vast majority of historically praised true crime novels such as the ones we have listed thus far, Monroe tracks the history and changing psychology of American crimes throughout the early 20th and 21st centuries with emotionally compelling academic vigour.
Buy now £14.51, Amazon
The Blood of Emmett Till by Timothy B. Tyson
The lynching of fourteen-year-old Emmett Till in 1955 is the often untold story that catalysed the Civil Rights Movement of the 50s and 60s. An act of terrorism committed by a group of white men in the Mississippi Delta, the murder of Emmett Till occurred immediately after the Supreme Court ruling of Brown vs. Topeka Board of Education, which declared public school segregation to be unconstitutional.
However, rather than focusing on the events which unfolded in the years after Till’s murder, Tyson delivers a fascinating mediation on the life and death of Emmett Till, the boy himself, with a penetrating, detective-like skill and acute penchant for detail.
Buy now £7.65, Amazon
And the Sea Will Tell by Vincent Bugliosi
Though we extolled the value of Bugliosi and Gentry’s 1974 non-fiction novel Helter Skelter, And the Sea Will Tell is perhaps Bugliosi’s most underrated piece of work. Despite the fact that the story itself – which begins with a beachcomber finding the real-life, gold-tooth embezzled skull in an aluminium container – sounds strangely like a case in a Sherlock Holmes novel, or even a game of Cluedo, the prosecutor famed for putting Charles Manson behind bars explains how he uncovered the mystery of the washed-up skull in real-time. Bugliosi’s incisive account of this very real case continues to fascinate true crime enthusiasts across the globe to this day.
Buy now £12.99, Amazon
