Are you joining up with Molly @ Silver Button Books for Frighteningly Good Reads? There's still one week until Halloween! I managed to surprise myself by reading not only the book I'd specifically set aside for Molly's very fun challenge, but another that had been on my shelves for awhile and is, arguably, the spookier... Continue Reading →
The First Book from The Last Podcast on the Left
The Last Book on the Left: Stories of Murder and Mayhem from History's Most Notorious Serial Killers (Amazon / Book Depository) Marcus Parks, Henry Zebrowski, and Ben Kissel of The Last Podcast on the Left, the long-running, make-you-laugh-til-you-cry comedy podcast covering stories of crime, the macabre and supernatural, conspiracy theories, alien abductions, high strangeness and general... Continue Reading →
Cold Cases from London, Ontario, the “Serial Killer Capital of Canada”
Book review: The Forest City Killer, by Vanessa Brown (Amazon / Book Depository) Author, bookstore owner, and local historian of London, Ontario Vanessa Brown spent five years researching a series of unsolved, decades-old homicides in her quiet hometown. *Keith Morrison voice* Well, mostly quiet, that is: London had the unofficial and unenviable title of the "serial killer... Continue Reading →
The Most Terrifying Serial Killer We Didn’t Know Existed
Book Review: American Predator, by Maureen Callahan (Amazon / Book Depository) In March 2012, Texas Highway Patrol needed a reason to stop a man on their highways. He'd been using the ATM card of missing 18-year-old Samantha Koenig, who'd been abducted at gunpoint from the coffee stand where she worked in Anchorage, Alaska. When he... Continue Reading →
“Mindhunter” John Douglas Breaks Down Behavior and Psychology in Four Profiles
Book review: The Killer Across the Table, by John Douglas and Mark Olshaker (Amazon / Book Depository) This is a book about the way violent predators think - the bedrock of my twenty-five years as an FBI special agent, behavioral profiler, and criminal investigative analyst, as well as the work I have done since my... Continue Reading →
Lives and Social Histories of the Ripper’s Canonical Five
Book review: The Five, by Hallie Rubenhold (Amazon / Book Depository) Polly, Annie, Elizabeth, Catherine and Mary Jane are famous for the same thing, though they never met. They came from Fleet Street, Knightsbridge, Wolverhampton, Sweden, and Wales. They wrote ballads, ran coffee houses, lived on country estates, they breathed ink-dust from printing presses and... Continue Reading →
Interviewing and Analyzing Bundy
Book review: The Only Living Witness, by Stephen G. Michaud & Hugh Aynesworth (Amazon / Book Depository) Despite aggressively unappealing covers, I was motivated to read this after watching the recent Netflix docuseries Conversations with a Killer. The authors behind the book serving as the docuseries' basis wrote this, too. I wasn't sure I wanted to read... Continue Reading →
Genesis of the “Mindhunter”
Book review: Mindhunter, by John Douglas and Mark Olshaker (Amazon / Book Depository) It isn’t always easy, and it’s never pleasant, putting yourself in these guys’ shoes —or inside their minds. But that’s what my people and I have to do. We have to try to feel what it was like for each one. When... Continue Reading →
They All Love Jack: The Ripper as Conspiracy Theory, Not Mystery
Book review: They All Love Jack, by Bruce Robinson (Amazon / Book Depository) ... there was nothing illaudable about being a Victorian Mason, any more than it was improper to enjoy membership of a tricycle club. But ... this narrative is about the bad guys, and about one in particular who went rotten, and what... Continue Reading →
The Interstate and the Murderer
Book review: Killer on the Road, by Ginger Strand America became more violent and more mobile at the same time. Were they linked? Did highways lead to highway violence? Yes and no. More highways meant more travel, more movement, more anonymity—all conducive to criminality. Highway users could become easy victims: stranded motorists, hitchhikers, drifters, and... Continue Reading →
An Austrian Serial Killer: The Strange Story of “Rehabilitated” Murderer Jack Unterweger
Book review: The Vienna Woods Killer, by John Leake (Amazon / Book Depository) John Leake, an American writer who lived nearly a decade in Vienna, wrote this definitive account of Austrian serial killer Jack Unterweger. Unterweger's is quite the interesting story, not least because the crime of serial murder is far from common in Austria. Combined... Continue Reading →
An Intriguing Cold Case and an Exhausting Memoir
Book review: The Kill Jar, by J. Reuben Appelman Amazon Over about a year spanning 1976-1977, at least four children were killed in Detroit's Oakland County by a serial killer clunkily dubbed the Oakland County Child Killer, or OCCK. The case remains officially unsolved, but as J. Reuben Appelman lays out in this true crime... Continue Reading →