Where is your nonfiction section please.
The Case of the Vanishing Blonde, by Mark Bowden (Amazon) Unspeakable Acts, edited by Sarah Weinman (Amazon) Two new books of long-form true crime nonfiction are out this month, and they're both pretty good. Let's get into it. First up is gifted narrative nonfiction author Mark Bowden's The Case of the Vanishing Blonde. My introduction... Continue Reading →
The Cold Vanish, by Jon Billman (Amazon) Outside journalist Jon Billman investigates disappearances that have occurred in national parks and remote areas of North American wilderness. These are what he calls "proverbial vanish-without-a-trace incidents, which happen a lot more (and a lot closer to your backyard) than almost anyone thinks.” The plethora of curious cases... Continue Reading →
Book review: Highway of Tears, by Jessica McDiarmid (Amazon / Book Depository) The highway of tears is a lonesome road that runs across a lonesome land. The plight of missing and murdered Indigenous women in Canada has increasingly been in the spotlight of late, deservingly so. One relative of a victim quoted in journalist Jessica McDiarmid's Highway... Continue Reading →
Book review: The Skeleton Crew, by Deborah Halber (Amazon / Book Depository) Chances are good that you or someone you know has at one point stumbled over a dead body. There are shockingly large numbers of them out there. According to the National Institute of Justice, America is home to tens of thousands of unidentified... Continue Reading →
Book review: Chase Darkness with Me, by Billy Jensen (Amazon / Book Depository) Crime writer and citizen digital detective Billy Jensen is known for his collaborative efforts to finish Michelle McNamara's I'll Be Gone in the Dark posthumously, but he has an impressive resume of his own in true crime journalism. In this account of... Continue Reading →
Book review: City of Omens, by Dan Werb (Amazon / Book Depository) Perhaps epidemiology could reveal the hidden structures lurking just beyond reach, like asbestos behind wallpaper. Those structures might manifest as cruel calamities - car crashes, murders, HIV infections - that at face value appear unrelated. If that were the case, these women were... Continue Reading →
Book review: The Last Stone, by Mark Bowden (Amazon / Book Depository) Mark Bowden is a gem in narrative journalism. I've so often been sucked into reading a longread, that kind of lose-track-of-time story, and see it's his after finally checking the byline. He's a wonderfully compelling storyteller and a thorough, detail-oriented journalist. In The... Continue Reading →
Book review: Amy: My Search for Her Killer, by James Renner (Book Depository) How long does it take a crime to become legend? Does it vary based on circumstances, on affluence? If the Bay Village police charged someone in Amy's death after sixteen years, would anyone really believe it? Or has so much time passed... Continue Reading →
Book review: Out of Thin Air, by Anthony Adeane (Amazon / Book Depository) This is a nation of reading and storytelling, with a rich literary history of world renown, where it is a long-standing tradition to give books to each other as gifts on Christmas Eve, where the legends of the Sagas are writ large... Continue Reading →
Book review: Missing Man, by Barry Meier (Amazon / Book Depository) FBI agents typically solve cases when criminals or terrorists make mistakes. Those missteps might involve a sloppy email, an impulsive Internet posting, repetitive travel patterns, or other fumbles. A mistake can provide the thread on which an investigator starts pulling. The more James McJunkin... Continue Reading →
Book review: No Stone Unturned, by Steve Jackson In 1988, several criminalists and other scientists sat down in a Denver-area restaurant and came up with the idea of burying pigs to study changes to environments caused by the graves and their contents. Disturbed by what they'd witnessed of outdated techniques for locating clandestine burial sites and... Continue Reading →
Book review: True Crime Addict, by James Renner (Amazon / Book Depository) I was so excited to read this. I'm also a true crime addict, and it's a weird thing to be. You can't really mention it at parties or anything. Luckily we're in an uptick of true crime, in different mediums, thanks to popular installments like the... Continue Reading →
What's Nonfiction? 