Criminal justice is serious business for those who work in the field. For the general public, however, it arouses great morbid curiosity. Many popular books have been ripped straight from the nation’s scariest headlines, revealing a glimpse of what it takes to solve a gruesome crime. Consider these 10 popular criminal justice novels:
1. bestial – The Savage Trail of a True American Monster – This 1998 non-fiction novel by Harold Schechter details the crimes of Earle Leonard Nelson, one of North America’s first serial killers.
2. Blind eye – The terrifying story of a doctor who got away with murder – Former attorney James B. Stewart explains how Michael Swango got away with poisoning 60 of his patients before he was caught.
3.Crime and science – The New Frontier in Criminology: This book, written by Jurgen Thorwald, was inspired by true accounts from the field, revealing valuable crime-fighting and forensic science methodologies.
4. Distributor doctor – The Rise and Fall of an All-American Boy and His Multimillion-Dollar Cocaine Empire – This book is about an Ivy League-educated dentist who managed to build a huge cocaine-trafficking operation. Mark Bowden, known for “Black Hawk Down,” published the book in 2000.
5. Donnie Brasco – My Undercover Life in the Mob – Joseph D. Pistone and Richard Wooley wrote this crime novel about Pistone’s six years as an undercover FBI agent infiltrating the Bonanno crime family in New York. The book was made into a movie starring Johnny Depp.
6. Helter Skelter – This crime novel by Vincent Bugliosi and Curt Gentry details the grisly Tate-LaBianca murders committed by Charles Manson and his followers. 7. Homicide: A Year on the Murderous Streets – As a reporter for the Baltimore Sun, David Simon was able to follow a group of homicide detectives in one of the most murderous cities in the US for an entire year to write this book.
8. In cold blood – This classic non-fiction story by Truman Capote details the 1959 murders of an innocent farming family in rural Kansas. Capote took an unusual journalistic approach, following the inner lives of the two men who committed the gruesome crime.
9. The Devil in the White City – Murder, Magic and Madness at the Fair That Changed America: Erik Larson details one of America’s first serial killers, HH Holmes, who owned a hotel during the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago.
10. Sage – As a police reporter, Nicholas Pileggi had first-hand access to the fascinating lives of ex-mobster Henry Hill and the Luchese crime family, allowing him to build this compelling story.
