Cover image of "Killers of the Flower Moon," one of the best true crime books

Although I tend to favor fictional rather than factual stories about crime, I’ve read many of the most widely admired true crime books. Some, I read years before I began posting reviews in 2010. But I’ve devoured many since. And below I’m listing the best of them. You’ll find every title on this list on one or another of the “best books” lists in this genre. Consider this mine.

In the list below, I’ve arranged the titles in alphabetical order by the authors’ last names. For each of the books I’ve read and reviewed, you’ll see the headline of my review with a link to the full text. For each of the four I read in years past, I’ve linked the title to the Wikipedia entry for the book. You’ll find them informative.

The best true crime books

Cover image of "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil," one of the best true crime books

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil: A Savannah Story by John Berendt (1994) 400 pages

The subtitle of this lush, atmospheric account of a murder case in Savannah, Georgia, tells the tale. Because the city is the leading character here, its deeply troubling history laid bare in Berendt’s account of the antebellum architecture and the ever-present greenery that fails to obscure the ugliness underneath. I have trouble remembering most books for long after I’ve read them. But this one, which I read upon its publication thirty years ago, has stayed with me.

Cover imagoes "The Spy Who Couldn't Spell"

The Spy Who Couldn’t Spell: A Dyslexic Traitor, an Unbreakable Code, and the FBI’s Hunt for America’s Stolen Secrets by Yudhijit Bhattacharjee (2016) 298 pages ★★★★★—Before Edward Snowden was “The Spy Who Couldn’t Spell”

You might be amazed at the number of Americans who have been convicted of spying against the United States over the past century. I certainly was. Wikipedia catalogs a total of 67. Nearly half that number (32) had committed espionage on behalf of the Soviet Union. Another five spied for Russia, including former CIA officer Aldrich Ames and former FBI agent Robert Hanssen. The name Brian Patrick Regan is little remembered. Yet just after the turn of this century Regan “pulled off the biggest heist of classified information in the annals of American espionage” before Edward Snowden.

Cover image of "Helter Skelter"

Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders by Vincent Bugliosi with Curt Gentry (1974) 689 pages

As the cover advertises, this book may in fact be the bestselling true crime account of all time. It certainly did make a splash upon its publication. After all, the ghoulish story of the Charles Manson case had hogged newspaper headlines for months. It was impossible to avoid at the time. And the prosecutor in the case, Vincent Bugliosi, wrote (or dictated this book to his collaborator), which lent it added authority.

Cover image of "In Cold Blood," one of the best true crime books

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote (1965) 343 pages

While I barely remember much about reading Helter Skelter, which may be the bestselling true crime book of all time, I have vivid memories of reading Truman Capote’s masterpiece. The book was published nearly a decade before the Manson book, and I read it shortly afterward. It’s a disturbingly graphic account of the brutal slaying of the Clutter family in the small farm community of Holcomb, Kansas. And Capote tells much of the story in the murderers’ own words.

Cover image of "Bad Blood"

Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou (2018) 328 pages ★★★★★—A cautionary tale about corporate power in Silicon Valley

Bad Blood is a cautionary tale about the corrosive effects of corporate power in Silicon Valley. It’s also vivid evidence for the invaluable role played by investigative journalists, whose work constitutes one of the few checks available in our society on corporate misbehavior. The multi-billion-dollar Theranos scandal detailed in this book is the most dramatic and best-known story of corporate fraud since Enron collapsed in 2001.

Cover image of "The Talented Mrs. Mandelbaum," one of the best true crime books

The Talented Mrs. Mandelbaum: The Rise and Fall of an American Organized-Crime Boss by Margalit Fox (2024) 336 pages ★★★★★—She was organized crime’s boss in Gilded Age New York

She ran a modest haberdashery shop on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Fredericka Mandelbaum, an “upright widow, philanthropic synagogue-goer, [and] doting mother of four,” was also the boss of the country’s most notorious crime syndicate. And when Pinkerton detectives finally staged a raid on her premises in 1884, she had reigned for twenty-five years as one of the most infamous underworld figures in America.

Cover image of "Killers of the Flower Moon," one of the best true crime books

Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann (2017) 347 pages ★★★★★—The case that helped put the FBI on the map

The Osage Nation were masters of a vast territory spanning what are now the states of Missouri, Arkansas, and Oklahoma. In 1907, a brilliant chief negotiated an agreement with the U.S. government allowing the Osage to retain all mineral rights, even if the land itself were sold. Soon afterward, oil was discovered there. The reservation sat on “some of the largest oil deposits in the United States.” By the 1920s, some three thousand Osage—a third of the number 70 years earlier—had become fabulously wealthy. Then white officials took notice, and soon it became clear that they would stop at nothing to get their hands on that wealth. Nothing.

Cover image of "Black Edge"

Black Edge: Inside Information, Dirty Money, and the Quest to Bring Down the Most Wanted Man on Wall Street by Sheelah Kolhatkar (2017) 370 pages ★★★★★—Hedge funds, insider trading, and the most wanted man on Wall Street 

If you want to understand the depth of corruption that prevails on Wall Street, a good place to start is New Yorker staff writer Sheelah Kolhatkar‘s admirable book, Black Edge: Inside Information, Dirty Money, and the Quest to Bring Down the Most Wanted Man on Wall Street. The central character in this superb piece of investigative journalism is Steven A. Cohen, the founder of a hedge fund named SAC Capital Advisors. A billionaire today just as he was then, Cohen epitomized the worst effects of the greed that has reigned in the financial sector for the past forty years.

Cover image of "The Devil in the White City," one of the best true crime books

The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America by Erik Larson (2003) 447 pages

Set in Chicago during the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, The Devil in the White City brilliantly tells the story of World’s Fair architect Daniel Burnham and of H. H. Holmes, who is widely considered to be the first serial killer in the United States.

Cover image of "The Library Book"

The Library Book by Susan Orlean (2018) 310 pages ★★★★★—An arson fire, the growing role of libraries, and eccentric librarians

Even if you’re not a passionate devotee of public libraries, you’ll be enchanted by this beautifully researched history of the Los Angeles Public Library, the eccentric librarians who have sometimes run it—and the fire that nearly destroyed it more than thirty years ago.

Cover image of "Just Mercy," one of the best true crime books

Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson (2014) 368 pages ★★★★★—A searing look at America’s broken criminal justice system

No one who is even marginally aware of the world we live in could possibly fail to understand that America’s criminal justice system is broken. Just how badly broken it is comes into sharp focus in a remarkable book by Bryan Stevenson, who was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship (“genius grant”) at an early age for his work defending prisoners victimized by the system—work he has continued for three decades since then.

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