Book picks similar to
The Life of David Gale by Dewey Gram
fiction
crime
mystery
biography
Court in the Middle
Andrew Fraser - 2007
Then it all went horribly wrong. In 1999 he was charged with being knowingly concerned with the importation of a commercial quantity of cocaine. Fraser pleaded guilty to a charge of possessing, trafficking a small quantity, and using cocaine over a period of time. He was sentenced to seven years in maximum security prison. Court in the Middle describes his early yearsgrowing up in a family of lawyers, running hard to build a criminal law practice; his successful years with a national practice, and defending high profile, sometimes notorious, clients. He also discusses his relationship with cocaine, addiction and deals, crime and punishment, and the shocking details of his time spent in a maximum security prison.
The Beautiful Cigar Girl: Mary Rogers, Edgar Allan Poe, and the Invention of Murder
Daniel Stashower - 2006
One year later, a struggling writer named Edgar Allan Poe decided to take on the case-and sent his fictional detective, C. Auguste Dupin, to solve the baffling murder of Mary Rogers in "The Mystery of Marie Rog�t."
The Night of the Hunter
Davis Grubb - 1953
This best-selling novel, first published in 1953 to wide acclaim by author Grubb, (who like Powers lived in Clarksburg, West Virginia), served as the basis for Charles Laughton's noir classic . Renamed "Harry Powell," the lead character in this book, with LOVE and HATE tattooed on his fingers, is remembered as one of the creepiest men in book and cinema history.
Shot in the Heart
Mikal Gilmore - 1994
Writer Mikal Gilmore is his younger brother. In Shot in the Heart, he tells the stunning story of their wildly dysfunctional family: their mother, a blacksheep daughter of unforgiving Mormon farmers; their father, a drunk, thief, and con man. It was a family destroyed by a multigenerational history of child abuse, alcoholism, crime, adultery, and murder. Mikal, burdened with the guilt of being his father's favorite and the shame of being Gary's brother, gracefully and painfully relates a murder tale "from inside the house where murder is born... a house that, in some ways, [he has] never been able to leave." Shot in the Heart is the history of an American family inextricably tied up with violence, and the story of how the children of this family committed murder and murdered themselves in payment for a long lineage of ruin. Haunting, harrowing, and profoundly affecting, Shot in the Heart exposes and explores a dark vein of American life that most of us would rather ignore. It is a book that will leave no reader unchanged.
Zodiac
Robert Graysmith - 1986
A sexual sadist who taunted police with anonymous notes. A madman who was never apprehended. This is the first, complete account of Zodiac's reign of terror. Is he still out there?
Public Enemies: America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933-34
Bryan Burrough - 2004
Edgar Hoover’s FBI to tell the full story—for the first time—of the most spectacular crime wave in American history, the two-year battle between the young Hoover and the assortment of criminals who became national icons: John Dillinger, Machine Gun Kelly, Bonnie and Clyde, Baby Face Nelson, Pretty Boy Floyd, and the Barkers. In an epic feat of storytelling and drawing on a remarkable amount of newly available material on all the major figures involved, Burrough reveals a web of interconnections within the vast American underworld and demonstrates how Hoover’s G-men overcame their early fumbles to secure the FBI’s rise to power.
Mindhunter: Inside the FBI's Elite Serial Crime Unit
John E. Douglas - 1995
He has confronted, interviewed and researched dozens of serial killers and assassins, including Charles Manson, Richard Speck, John Wayne Gacy, and James Earl Ray - for a landmark study to understand their motives. To get inside their minds. He is Special Agent John Douglas, the model for law enforcement legend Jack Crawford in Thomas Harris's thrillers Red Dragon and The Silence of the Lambs, and the man who ushered in a new age in behavorial science and criminal profiling. Recently retired after twenty-five years of service, John Douglas can finally tell his unique and compelling story.
And the Sea Will Tell
Vincent Bugliosi - 1991
The investigation that follows uncovers an extraordinarily complex and puzzling true-crime story. Only Vincent Bugliosi, who recounted his successful prosecution of mass murderer Charles Manson in the bestseller Helter Skelter, was able to draw together the hundreds of conflicting details of the mystery and reconstruct what really happened when four people found hell in a tropical paradise. And the Sea Will Tell reconstructs the events and subsequent trial of a riveting true murder mystery, and probes into the dark heart of a serpentine scenario of death.
Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper - Case Closed
Patricia Cornwell - 2002
Now updated with new material that brings the killer's picture into clearer focus.In the fall of 1888, all of London was held in the grip of unspeakable terror. An elusive madman calling himself Jack the Ripper was brutally butchering women in the slums of London’s East End. Police seemed powerless to stop the killer, who delighted in taunting them and whose crimes were clearly escalating in violence from victim to victim. And then the Ripper’s violent spree seemingly ended as abruptly as it had begun. He had struck out of nowhere and then vanished from the scene. Decades passed, then fifty years, then a hundred, and the Ripper’s bloody sexual crimes became anemic and impotent fodder for puzzles, mystery weekends, crime conventions, and so-called “Ripper Walks” that end with pints of ale in the pubs of Whitechapel. But to number-one New York Times bestselling novelist Patricia Cornwell, the Ripper murders are not cute little mysteries to be transformed into parlor games or movies but rather a series of terrible crimes that no one should get away with, even after death. Now Cornwell applies her trademark skills for meticulous research and scientific expertise to dig deeper into the Ripper case than any detective before her—and reveal the true identity of this fabled Victorian killer.In Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper, Case Closed, Cornwell combines the rigorous discipline of twenty-first century police investigation with forensic techniques undreamed of during the late Victorian era to solve one of the most infamous and difficult serial murder cases in history. Drawing on unparalleled access to original Ripper evidence, documents, and records, as well as archival, academic, and law-enforcement resources, FBI profilers, and top forensic scientists, Cornwell reveals that Jack the Ripper was none other than a respected painter of his day, an artist now collected by some of the world’s finest museums: Walter Richard Sickert.It has been said of Cornwell that no one depicts the human capability for evil better than she. Adding layer after layer of circumstantial evidence to the physical evidence discovered by modern forensic science and expert minds, Cornwell shows that Sickert, who died peacefully in his bed in 1942, at the age of 81, was not only one of Great Britain’s greatest painters but also a serial killer, a damaged diabolical man driven by megalomania and hate. She exposes Sickert as the author of the infamous Ripper letters that were written to the Metropolitan Police and the press. Her detailed analysis of his paintings shows that his art continually depicted his horrific mutilation of his victims, and her examination of this man’s birth defects, the consequent genital surgical interventions, and their effects on his upbringing present a casebook example of how a psychopathic killer is created.New information and startling revelations detailed in Portrait of a Killer include:- How a year-long battery of more than 100 DNA tests—on samples drawn by Cornwell’s forensics team in September 2001 from original Ripper letters and Sickert documents—yielded the first shadows of the 75- to 114 year-old genetic evid...
The Switch
Elmore Leonard - 1978
The Grand Master whom the New York Times Book Review calls, “the greatest crime writer of our time, perhaps ever,” has written a wry and twisting tale that any of the other all-time greats—Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, John D. MacDonald, James M. Cain, Robert Parker…every noir author who ever walked a detective, cop, or criminal into a shadowy alley—would be thrilled to call their own. Leonard, the man who has given us U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens (currently starring in TV’s Justified) is at his storytelling best, as a spurned wife decides to take a rightful—and profitable—revenge on her deceiving hubby by teaming up with the two thugs he hired to abduct her.
Reservation Road
John Burnham Schwartz - 1998
. . . A powerful and affecting novel."--The New York TimesA tragic accident sets in motion a cycle of violence and retribution in John Burnham Schwartz's riveting novel Reservation Road. Two haunted men and their families are engulfed by the emotions surrounding an unexpected and horrendous death. Ethan, a respected professor of literature at a small New England college, is wracked by an obsession with revenge that threatens to tear his family apart. Dwight, a man at once fleeing his crime and hoping to get caught, wrestles with overwhelming guilt and his sense of obligation to his son. As these two men's lives unravel, Reservation Road moves to its startling conclusion. This is an astonishing tale of love and loss, rage and redemption, that is as suspenseful as it is emotionally compelling. "Thrums with suspense and moral ambiguity. . . . This is one of those rare--very rare--novels that you don't so much read as inhabit and that makes everyday life seem altogether mysterious." --Entertainment Weekly"A triumph . . . character-driven as it is, it reads like a thriller, swift and complete."--The New York Times Book Review
The Silence of the Lambs
Yvonne Tasker - 2002
In this study, Yvonne Tasker explores the way the film weaves together gothic, horror and thriller conventions to generate both a distinctive variation on the cinematic portrayal of insanity and crime, and a fascinating intervention in the sexual politics of genre.
Irène
Pierre Lemaitre - 2006
Worse still, the press seem to have it in for him – his every move is headline news. When he discovers that the killer has killed before – that each murder is a homage to a classic crime novel – the fourth estate are quick to coin a nickname… The Novelist…With both men in the public eye, the case develops into a personal duel, each hell-bent on outsmarting the other. There can only be one winner – whoever has the least to lose…
Daddy's Little Girl
Mary Higgins Clark - 2002
There were three suspects: Rob Westerfield, nineteen-year-old scion of a wealthy, prominent family, whom Andrea has been secretly dating; Paul Stroebel, a sixteen-year-old schoolmate, who had a crush on Andrea; and Will Nebels, a local handyman in his forties.It was Ellie who had led her parents to a hideout in which Andrea's body was found -- a secret hideaway in which she met her friends. And it was Ellie who was blamed by her parents for her sister's death for not telling them about this place the night Andrea was missing. It was also Ellie's testimony that led to the conviction of the man she was firmly convinced was the killer. Steadfastly denying his guilt, he spent the next twenty-two years in prison.When he comes up for parole, Ellie, now an investigative reporter for an Atlanta newspaper, protests his release. Nonetheless, the convicted killer is set free and returns to Oldham. Determined to thwart his attempts to whitewash his reputation, Ellie also returns to Oldham, intent on creating a Website and writing a book that will conclusively prove his guilt. As she delves deeper into her research, however, she uncovers horrifying and heretofore unknown facts that shed new light on her sister's murder. With each discovery, she comes closer to a confrontation with a desperate killer.Gripping and relentlessly compelling, Daddy's Little Girl, a portrayal of a family shattered by crime, reflects Mary Higgins Clark's uncanny insight into the twisted mind of a killer and is further evidence of why she is America's favorite author of suspense.