AMERICAN AUTHORS CHALLENGE -AUGUST 2025: True Crime & its Fictional Offspring

Clockwise from top left: Truman Capote/Megan Abbott/Alfair Burke\Ann Rule/Michelle McNamara/Norman Mailer/Centre: Elmore Leonard

Undoubtedly the most famous true crime novelisations are Truman Capote's In Cold Blood and Norman Mailer's The Executioners Song, both writers had direct contact with the protagonists while they were incarcerated, as did Ann Rule who befriended Ted Bundy while working at a crisis hotline, and who subsequently wrote The Stranger Beside Me, other of her novels are also based on true crime cases as well.

Michelle McNamara's I'll Be Gone in the Dark (finished posthumously by her husband) focuses on California's Golden Gate Killer of the 70s and 80s.

Other writers riffing off true crime cases include Lori Roy (The Disappearing), Elmore Leonard (across his novels), Alafair Burke (The Wife), Megan Abbott (Give Me Your Hand focusing on female friendships), and ex-FBI agent John E. Douglas (whose Mindhunter books focus on serial killers)

The Capote and Mailer novels were turned into fine if harrowing films, and although not based on a novel, the movie 'The Badlands' was based on the story of Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate's 1950's murder spree.

I am excited about this month. Although she didn't make a habit of using actual cases as the basis of her work, one of my favorite crime/mystery authors, Sue Grafton, took a turn at fictionalizing an unsolved murder in Q is for Quarry, even doing her best to truly solve it (without success). A few more recommendations from me that will fit this challenge: Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood, Kings of the Earth by Jon Clinch, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt, An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser. I must comb my shelves for an unread novel based on a true crime...I'm sure there must be at least one...

I'm planning to read Bird Man: The Many Faces of Robert Stroud. I was very surprised to learn a couple of years ago that my 1st cousin 3x removed got involved with Stroud while he was in Leavenworth through their mutual interest in canaries. His FBI file is available in the Internet Archive, and the file includes a background check on my cousin that was helpful for my family history research.

I just finished a novel that I think would fit. In The Queens of Crime by Marie Benedict, five female Golden Age detective novelists solve a real-life "locked room" mystery. The murder in the novel is based on a real unsolved murder of a young woman named May Daniels.

>2 laytonwoman3rd: I loved Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil Linda. Maybe time for a reread.

>3 cbl_tn: Fascinating Carrie.

>2 laytonwoman3rd: & >5 Caroline_McElwee: I have Mailer's massive book on the shelves and want to get to it eventually but it is unlikely to be next month. Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil looks like it could be the one.

ETA

I am now torn as I want to read Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann and I also have Columbine by Dave Cullen and The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson to consider from the shelves.

I am finally going to get The Sinners All Bow read this month. It is nonfiction investigation.

>8 Kristelh: Oh, I didn't know about that one. Sounds very interesting.

I will be reading Behold the Monster by Jillian Lauren for the challenge this month. I used to read a ton of true crime back in the day, but it has been a while since I dipped my toe into it with any degree of regularity.

>7 PaulCranswick: Murder mystery aside, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil painted such a fascinating picture of Savannah that I had to pay the city a visit. It did not disappoint.

I enjoyed my trip to Savanna and bought the book Midnight in the Garden of Good And Evil when touring the Prohibition museum. I finished The Sinners All Bow, One Murder, and the Real Hester Prynne by Kate Winkler Dawson. The two authors includes her own investigation of a 19th century death that inspired Nathaniel Hawthorne to write the The Scarlet Letter. The mysterious death of 30-year-old Sarah Maria Cornell on a frosty night in December 1832 was investigated a mere six months later by a writer named Catharine Williams. The book has lots of flaws.

I've pulled five true crime tomes from the shelves where they've been idling, just waiting for this opportunity. I, of course, needed a poke to snatch 'em from wherever, so I googled and was directed to 100 Best True Crimes Books.

I scanned the list, marking the books I have on the TBR.

American Heiress, Jeffrey Toobin's account of the Patty Hearst kidnapping.
Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators by Ronan Farrow
Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town by Jon Krakauer
The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron by Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind
The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War by Ben Macintyre

Don't know which of them will perk to the top. At this moment, I want to read each one. A fantasy.

Ohh, true crime, I have a lot of those on my shelves but I'll have to pick out the American ones. So far I've got a choice of:

American Sherlock: Murder, Forensics, and the Birth of American CSI by Kate Winkler Dawson
The Case of the Murderous Dr. Cream by Dean Jobb - although this one covers many countries
A Cast of Killers by Sidney Kirkpatrick
The Lazarus Files by Matthew McGough
I'll Be Gone in the Dark by Michelle McNamara
Race Against Time: A Reporter Reopens the Unsolved Murder Cases of the Civil Rights Era by Jerry Mitchell
Mrs. Sherlock Holmes: The True Story of New York City's Greatest Female Detective and the 1917 Missing Girl Case that Captivated a Nation by Brad Ricca

Hmm, looks like I should pick one from that list.

>14 Familyhistorian: I also have American Sherlock, Meg, so if you decide to read that one, I will try and rustle up my copy too :)

>15 alcottacre: Sounds like a plan, Stasia. I'll go and dig out my copy.

>16 Familyhistorian: Well, rats. Now I have to go and find mine. LOL

ETA: Found it!

>17 alcottacre: That didn't take long. So now we're good to go - well, except for all the other books needing to go back to the library. Will add it to the mix.

>17 alcottacre: Yeah, I got lucky in finding it! I completely understand about the library books. I have several that I need to finish up before I head to Chicago in a couple of weeks.

I’m going to go with Megan Abbott’s Give Me Your Hand which draws inspiration from a 1996 Texas Monthly article about Marie Robards, a high school student who poisoned her father.

I started Jillian Lauren's Behold the Monster, but I just do not care for the writing style at all, so it is a DNF for me. I am hoping that I like American Sherlock more!

I've read the first 30 pages or so of both The Devil in the White City and The Murder of Helen Jewett, and I think I will proceed with the former.

I finally finished American Sherlock today and while I found the book interesting, I do wish the author could have controlled some of the repetitiveness in her writing. I gave the book 3.75 stars overall.

I finished The Devil in the White City, and my review is on the book page now. I'll just say here that I was not terribly impressed with the book as a whole. Although there were parts of it that I did find very interesting, it alternated between too much information on subjects that I didn't care about, and too little information on some that I'd really like to know more about.

September's author is Alice Hoffman, and The thread for her is up and ready for you here.

I have the Michelle McNamara book about the Golden State Killer and hope to read it before the year is out.

With the proliferation of CSI programs, we’ve become used to the use of forensics in policing. In American Sherlock, the reader learns about the beginning of the scientific investigation at crime scenes which were once undertaken by private enterprise. In the book, the focus was on Edward Oscar Heinrich who was known as the “American Sherlock Holmes”. As his story unfolded it showed the growth of acceptance of scientific evidence as well as the perils of trying to run this kind of enterprise as a private citizen. It was interesting but a bit dry.