10 best books for True Crime sleuths

No matter how much anyone tries to deny it, there’s something infinitely captivating about the potential darkness of the human mind. Call it morbid curiosity, but it’s fascinating to realize the depths of depravity that some people are capable of reaching. 

The True Crime genre is rife with tales of murder, betrayal, and darkness. If you want a glimpse into the darkness of a murderer’s mind or a deep dive into their childhood to try and figure out what made them turn out the way they did, there’s something out there for every purpose. 

As someone who has a collection of True Crime books that would make even the most trusting of detectives a little suspicious, I’ve been reading about murder and crime since my teen years. As such, I’ve picked out a few favorites over the years. 

Mindhunter was one of the books that inspired me to study Criminal Psychology. Although I’ve never done anything with that study, it’s still an interesting subject. In Mindhunter, John Douglas gives details about the art of Criminal Profiling, something that he helped to father the concept of. 

Having worked on cases such as Jeffrey Dahmer and serving as the inspiration for Jack Crawford in The Silence of the Lambs, John Douglas is a trustworthy guide as you take your first dip into the world of criminal psychology. 

As much as it’s a weird concept to have a favorite Criminologist, Christopher Berry-Dee is mine, and he was part of my introduction to the True Crime genre all those years ago. Talking with Serial Killers is one of many books that follow the same format — in-depth descriptions of his meetings with some of the most depraved killers known to human history and verbatim retellings of his interviews with them. 

As someone deeply interested in crime and criminal psychology, the Black Museum in London’s Scotland Yard is somewhere that I’ve always longed to visit. It’s filled with evidence and reports of murders committed in London over centuries, since the investigative base was established in 1829. 

Sadly, it’s closed to the public, so Murders of the Black Museum is as close as I’ll ever visit. The book is filled with detailed looks at a multitude of murders and photos of evidence that hasn’t been outside of Scotland Yard since it was put there, and it is infinitely interesting to dive into. 

As fascinating as it is to look at a crime through a criminologist or a criminal psychologist's expertise, sometimes seeing the crimes through the eyes of someone close to the criminal is somehow more interesting. Ann Rule knew Ted Bundy when he was (ironically) working at the Crisis Prevention Center during the early '70s. 

This gives Ann a unique perspective on Bundy, from before the time that he is known to have committed his first murder. She knew him as a friend, just another person in a world filled with them, before his name became a household name for all the wrong reasons. She writes about their friendship in The Stranger Beside Me, and it’s an interesting insight into who he was before he became a monster. 

I’m fairly convinced, by this point, that we will never definitively know who Jack the Ripper really was. He escaped detection at the time of his depraved crimes, his identity was never uncovered in the century that followed, and while there is still a constant string of names of could-bes, it’s safe to assume that he will remain anonymous. 

The same cannot be said for his victims. The five women who were brutally killed during his brief murderous stint in London’s Whitechapel deserve to be known for more than the circumstances of their deaths. The Five is a deep dive into who they were before they died and offers a glimpse of life in the slums of Victorian London. 

The Columbine Massacre is, as it should be, a touchy subject. It was the first significant mass shooting to take place in a school, and it has since become the precursor to many more horrific and heartbreaking events. The two perpetrators are now infamous, and their crimes are now a part of American history. 

Dylan Klebold was one of the shooters, and A Mother’s Reckoning is his mother’s retelling of events leading up to and following that fateful day. It’s easy to blame a mother for overlooking signs, but nobody blames Sue more than she does herself. All of the profits from her memoir were donated to mental health charities. 

Before writing I’ll Be Gone in the Dark, Michelle McNamara was already a well-known true crime journalist, creating the TrueCrimeDiary.com website that proved very popular. At some point, she became obsessed with the idea of discovering the identity of a serial rapist and murderer in California, who she dubbed the Golden State Killer. 

Sadly, the book was never finished before she died, but her husband took up the mantle with two other writers to complete her work and finally have it published. Two months after the book was finally released to the public, the cold case was solved when Joseph James DeAngelo was arrested and charged with the six murders McNamara desperately wanted to solve. 

If You Tell 

Gregg Olsen

If You Tell is a gutwrenching true story of Nikki, Sami, and Tori Knotek, who were brutally mistreated and abused by their mother for their entire childhood. Abuse is never an easy topic to read, and Michelle Knotek took the levels of abuse to extremes that should never be possible between a mother and their children. 

Mixed in with the horrific story of abuse are three murders, but also an inspirational story of sisterhood and determination to keep going. Even though, at times, If You Tell is the kind of book that you need to put down to take a step back, it’s also a true tale of survival. 

While reading about murderers is interesting, there’s something darkly fascinating about crimes that remain unsolved. If you want to dive into some cases that haven’t been solved yet, then Cold Cases is an excellent choice. 

While some have been solved since the publication of Cold Cases (the Golden State Killer, for one), it’s interesting to read about the cases from the perspective of a time before they were solved. For others, it’s scary to realise that people can commit such heinous crimes and manage to get away with them. 

One of the darkest and most horrifying murder cases I’ve ever come across was perpetrated by Armin Meiwes, also known as the Rotenburg Cannibal, who used the internet (more specifically, a Cannibalism fetish forum) to find a victim fully willing to be cannibalized. Cannibal is the story of his life, crimes, and sentencing.

For the act, Meiwes was originally jailed for only eight years and six months for Manslaughter, owing to the willingness of his victim. In a retrial in 2006, Meiwes was then convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison, quite rightfully. He argued that his crime was not murder, but instead assisted suicide, and entirely consensual between both parties.

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