True Crime
How an Epic History of the Mafia Came out of a Chance Meeting with a Literary Legend
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My last book about the mafia, Mob Rules: What the Mafia Can Teach the Legitimate Businessman, was an international bestseller translated into 20 languages. Because of the book’s global appeal, I was invited by the German media conglomerate Axel Springer to speak at their annual retreat for editors, being held at the Hotel Villa Athena…
How to Write Fiction about True Crime
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If you are going to write a sensational, news-worthy crime story into your fiction, you have a few models for how to proceed. First, there is the Gone Girl model. Use a real-life crime as your inspiration—in Flynn’s case, the disappearance of Laci Peterson—and take liberties. Change names, character backgrounds, and crucial plot elements. Twist…
The Best True Crime Books of 2023
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The CrimeReads editors make their selections for the year’s best true crime books. * Jillian Lauren, Behold the Monster (Sourcebooks) This startling new book uncovers the crimes of serial killer Samuel Little. Through her many conversations with Little and meticulous research, Lauren begins to uncover the reasons why so many murders, now tied to Little,…
The Mystery of Oak Island
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On Oak Island, everybody gets up early. By dawn, with the fog turning into a drizzle, the crew is hard at work. I’ve taken refuge inside the rusted hulk of an old tank car, where I can take notes without the ink smearing. Up the hill, men cluster around a drilling rig that is pounding…
Uptown Gothic: The NYC Photographs of Thaddeus Wilkerson
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Growing-up in upper Manhattan, on 151st Street between Broadway and Riverside, I always thought of my neighborhood as Harlem or Sugar Hill. Mom, who’d lived in the area since the mid-1950s, referred to it as Hamilton Grange, named after the post office located on 146th between Broadway and Amsterdam. Decades later others, especially real estate…
Delusions of Grandeur: The Scandalous Crime of a Los Angeles Millionaire
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The couple walked on the beach at Santa Monica that September afternoon in 1903, then stopped at a shop to buy postcards. Once they were back in their suite on the third floor of the oceanside Arcadia Hotel, Tina Griffith began to pack – they were heading home to Los Angeles in the morning. Her…
The Many Words for Yakuza
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“It seems fairly evident that the selection of such simple terms must to a certain extent depend upon the chief interests of a people; and where it is necessary to distinguish a certain phenomenon in many aspects, which in the life of the people play each an entirely independent role, many independent words may develop,…
Memory, Place, and Hauntings: On Toronto’s Seedy Seventies-Era “Sin Strip”
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In the late 70s my family emigrated to Toronto and stayed for two years. In those days, downtown was notorious for its Sin Strip. Four blocks concentrated on Yonge between Gerrard and Dundas. They were loaded with strip joints, adult bookstores, rub ‘n’ tugs and movie theatres which, according to The Globe and Mail, made…
The Grieving Mother Who Became An Angel of Vengeance
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On January 24, 2014, Miriam Rodriguez received a call at 4 a.m. from her eldest daughter Azalea—a call that would change her and her family’s lives forever. Miriam’s younger daughter, Karen, had been kidnapped by the Zeta drug cartel and was being held for $77,000 in ransom. Though Miriam paid the ransom immediately, and several…
Delving Into the Real Story of Charlie Starkweather, Spree Killer, Demon of the American ’50s
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In 1958, America was at the peak of the post-WWII boom. The country had emerged from the war as the strongest economic and military power in the world. Prosperity abounded. Returning soldiers went to college on the G.I. Bill, which also offered longer-term loans to allow the purchase of larger homes in areas that would…