Look, when I set a goal of reading 52 books this year, I sincerely meant to read mostly meaty, intellectual, improving books. My Kindle is full of books on nearly every science, history, self-improvement, business, and other such lofty subjects. I’ve even got some fairly hefty literature, including some substantial fantasy and science fiction I should be reading. My physical bookshelves are groaning under unread books guaranteed to spice up the old intellect. So let’s see how that’s going, shall we? Ha ha ha whoops. Look, in my defense, I don’t count scientific papers as books. If I did, that Earth Science section would be giving the True Crime slice a decent challenge for first place. But it’s true. I’ve been on a true crime spree. It’s gotten so bad that I subscribed to Kindle Unlimited so I could continue my spree cheaply and easily. Some of the true crime books I’ve been reading have transcended the usual expectations of the genre. They become deep explorations of psychology, sociology, history, and science. They are superbly written, deeply researched, and leave you with some shaken beliefs and plenty to think about. I’ll review those books in depth. Here in this post, we’ll hit up the books that were perfectly good reading, but didn’t manage to make the leap from compelling to transcendent. At the end, I shall rate them on a scale of golden gavels, from one (meh) to three (great). And if you decide you wish to read one or all, and purchase them through the provided links, you will not only find your true crime needs satisfied, but also earn me a spot of Amazon credit so I can continue my true crime spree purchase further improving books to review for you. Thank you! Please feel free to leave your own recommendations in the comments below. My Daddy Is a Hero: How Chris Watts Went from Family Man to Family Killer by Lena Derhally There is something really profoundly disturbing about the family annihilator, who decides that their spouse and kids are worth more to them dead than alive for whatever reason. The worst ones are the happy families, where on the surface it looks like everything was pretty ordinary. There may be some everyday issues, but the police aren’t being called out for domestic violence issues, neighbors aren’t hearing screaming matches, the couple seems relatively happy, and the kids are pretty well adjusted. That was Shanann and Chris Watts’s family, until he murdered Shanann and their two girls, plus the fetus she was carrying. What causes a typical suburban dude to decide wholesale murder is preferable to divorce? This book, written by a psychotherapist and intensely researched, attempts to answer that question. If you’ve seen the Netflix documentary about this case, it will put a lot of things into better context. Lena Derhally does a deep-dive into Chris Watts’s life and mind. She does the same for Shanann, showing that no, she didn’t drive him to do this by being a domineering harridan or whatever excuse people would like to proffer for her brutal murder. Lena also debunks the idea that a) Chris has Asperger’s and b) that people with Asperger’s are likely to commit horrible murders, which is nice to see. This book was eminently readable, very informative, and took good care of the victims. 3/3 golden gavels, would recommend. A Tangled Web: A Cyberstalker, a Deadly Obsession, and the Twisting Path to Justice by Leslie Rule It’s somewhat unusual for a woman to be a stalker, but not uncommon. It’s much less ordinary for a woman to be a violent stalker; more rare still for her to be a murderous one. And it’s supremely disturbing when she’s not only a murderous stalker, but kills her love object’s date and then puts on a cyber version of that date’s skin, pretending to be her in order to stalk, harass, and deceive. It gets beyond freaky when that stalker in a dead woman’s cyber clothing then uses her campaign to win the affections of her object of obsession. Leslie Rule (yes, that Rule; she’s indeed the daughter of Ann Rule) weaves this whole outrageous story together masterfully. It’s not comfortable walking in the mind of a murderous stalker, but it’s utterly compelling. And lords, the tension you feel as you watch her poor lover being terrorized with horrible messages and acts from his supposed ex, and you can’t scream to him, “Dude, it’s the woman right beside you who’s doing this!” And even after you think you’ve seen the worst she can do, she escalates. Yikes. Do I recommend this book? Do I ever! Skeptics will just have to smile indulgently when Leslie, who’s a former paranormal writer, segues briefly into speculation about ghosts. It’s okay. The rest of the book is firmly grounded on this side of the veil. Butcher, Baker: The True Account of an Alaskan Serial Killer by Walter Gilmour and Leland E. Hale I first read about Robert Hansen’s crimes in Mindhunter, back in the long-ago days when I was just a young ‘un working in a bookstore and learning how truly fucked up human beings can be. There was just one chapter on this guy who flew women into the Alaskan wilderness and shot them dead for sport – a substantial one, but not nearly enough. So of course I snatched this book right up when I saw it. This guy. This fucking guy. The authors do a solid job of tracing his general lack of human decency through a lifetime of escalating crime. I had no idea of the extent of his youthful criminality, but it’s a lot. The shit he put his poor wife and kids through because he was a twisted little shit: also a lot. It’s fascinating to watch the detectives first piecing together the fact they had a killer, then a serial killer, then following a trail of disparate clues until they finally were able to identify and stop this sadistic murderer. The only reason I’m not giving it three golden gavels is because it’s not a standout work. It’s very solid work, however, and sated decades of wondering about Hansen, so yes, definitely, if this is your sort of thing, read it. In the Dark: The True Story of the Blackout Ripper by Simon Read A long time ago in a state far, far away, I joined a writer’s forum. One fateful day, a thread entitled “Death” appeared. I was a semi-goth, an enormous fan of a certain Endless in Neil Gaiman’s Sandman universe, and so of course couldn’t resist. I clicked. And promptly clicked not only with the thread author (who wanted tips on how to write character deaths), but two people fated to become some of my favorite published authors and humans: Nicole Gilbertson and Simon Read. We’ll talk about Nicole’s marvelous book someday soon. For now, because this is a true crime spree, we’ll focus on Simon. Simon had just published his first true crime book, On the House: the Bizarre Killing of Michael Malloy. I bought it. I read it (in paperback, no less). We will talk about it in depth at a later time because it is a scream. So of course, when Simon released In the Dark, I picked it up immediately. And damn, it was dark. While On the House was darkly humorous, this one is darkly horrific. It concerns a series of murders committed during the London Blitz during WWII, where four young women were brutalized and killed, and two more attacked but survived, in less than a week. You may have seen the story of the Blackout Ripper on Murder Maps, but Simon’s book takes you deep into the time and the events. You’ll come away with air raid sirens wailing in your ears, brick dust from shattered buildings on your skin, and the scent of blood in your nose. Would I recommend this book if Simon wasn’t a friend of mine? Yes. A thousand times yes. If you like reading about murder, world wars, and history, then this one’s for you. Poisoned Blood: A True Story of Murder, Passion, and an Astonishing Hoax by Philip E. Ginsburg This is ostensibly a story about a murderous mother, but in many ways it’s also about mediocre white men. There’s the mediocre white man who wrote it, who got away with some truly egregious typos, lackluster chapter endings, and calling redirect “recross” when describing a witness being questioned in court. (Whoever edited this was just as mediocre as the author, or possibly just burned out and not even phoning it in.) There were times I nearly deleted this book from my Kindle with prejudice. Then there are the mediocre white male doctors, who, when faced with a young woman presenting with textbook arsenic poisoning symptoms, the same symptoms that had led to her father’s death only a few years before, threw up their hands and said, “Whelp, must be all in her noggin!” I was about ready to strangle me some medical professionals by the end. The profession is rescued by a decidedly sharp young white male ER doctor who looks at the symptoms, checks for signs of arsenic poisoning in the poor girl’s nails, and promptly saves her life. The book is rescued from the author and editors’ lack of polish by its subject: Marie Hilley, one of the most heinous and intriguing poisoners I’ve ever read about. This woman not only murdered her husband and attempted to murder her daughter in the coldest of cold blood, but slipped the hounds and spent years living under an assumed name. Well, names, because she faked her own death and then came back as her “twin sister.” Gods only know how many more people she would have arseniced to death if authorities hadn’t finally caught up with her, and she hadn’t died during an escape attempt. I hope someone else who isn’t a mediocre dude writes about her and her victims in more depth someday, because damn. My Mother, A Serial Killer by Hazel Baron Mid-20th Century Australia. A mother lives a nomadic existence with her kids. The ones she drugged so she could murder their father one night. And had in the car while she shtupped her boy toy. Yeah, those kids weren’t all right, especially not since Mummy constantly resorted to murder and arson to get everything she wanted. Few people were safe from her, including her kids. And she might have gotten away with it, too, if it wasn’t for her remarkably brave daughter. This book captures so well the topsy-turvy world of kids who know something’s wrong, who are mistreated and neglected, who witness terrible things, but still love their mama. It shows how murder and the bringing down of a murderer rips siblings apart. And it shows so vividly the fear and turmoil you go through when you’ve got to turn your own mother in. Plus, it’s in Australia. How can you resist that? Trace Evidence: The Hunt for the I-5 Serial Killer by Bruce Henderson So after the disaster that was Poisoned Blood, I tried to swear off true crime books by men for a while. Then this one popped up in Kindle’s Today’s Deals. Bastards. It was about serial murderer Roger Kibbe, so I had to read it. I’d just seen a New Detectives episode about the case and wanted to know more. It’s wild. It has some of the best trace evidence examiners ever, a neat bit of profiling that helped detectives link cases across several jurisdictions, the most fucked up idea of an “autopsy” I’ve ever seen a coroner perform, a sex worker with nerves of steel and lungs to match, and detectives who refuse to give up. There’s a few really annoying bits where the author gets up on a conservative-sounding soapbox to whine about how hard the cops have it what with budgets and rules and stuff, but the rest...