Books like Helltown

I was shaken to my core not only by Capote’s character study of two different yet partnered killers but also by his behind-the-scenes depiction of the death penalty process. For the first time, I began to see how capital punishment affects all those involved in its machinations.

I was so excited to see a book that featured an innovative French pathologist, Alexandre Lacassagne, who invented the criminal autobiography during the 1890s.

Starr delves into the French records to show the insights Lacassagne derived about the criminal mind, which altered many notions in criminology. Starr also tells a compelling tale about an early serial killer, the French Ripper, who openly discussed his life history and even helped police find his victims.

During the age of Jack the Ripper, when the first behavioral profiles were used for linking crimes and understanding motives, the French Ripper demonstrated just how deranged a lust killer can be. This book expanded my awareness of early criminal psychology.   

For over a century, there’s been a mystery about the identity of one of the most notorious female serial killers of the twentieth century, Belle Gunness. Did she die in a fire, or did she fake her death and escape?

Schechter’s book-length study leaves no stone unturned. If anyone could fully address this mystery, I knew he could. He’s a foremost authority on true crime. For me, any book he writes is a must-read.

Although I knew this story well, Schechter brought more to it than I’d seen before. I was fascinated with the details of the reports from mental health experts, including criminal anthropologist Cesare Lombroso. He spotted Belle’s “super intelligence for doing evil,” making her “more terrible than any male criminal.” I found this page-turner to be both meticulous and gripping.

Most people don’t know the surprising story of the first FBI profile, but I think it’s one of the best examples of how the method works.

I love that the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit’s founders, Howard Teten and Patrick Mullaney, get their due since they’ve been eclipsed by other profilers’ books.

For the first time, we get the full story of a deadly kidnapping in Montana, told by someone who grew up in the area. I find Ron Franscell’s true crime books to have literary qualities that others lack while also delivering a solid story. In addition, the kidnapper turned out to be a truly shocking individual.

This story is told from the perspective of a serial killer's stepdaughter, Sophie, and I swallowed it in two sittings.

Matty Melgren, Sophie’s stepfather, is dying and wants to meet. He’s in prison and his imminent death takes Sophie right back to her childhood. The story is told from Sophie’s perspective as a twelve-year-old observing the breakdown of her mother and Matty’s relationship and as an adult debating how much she wants answers and what they might cost her.

I loved the dual timeline and thought it was a really fresh way to approach a serial killer novel. 

Who can match the character development and killer pacing of Tess Gerritsen’s Rizzoli & Isles books? Her characters are best friends who understand and accept each other’s flaws completely. I love the menacing characters who stalk the BFF duo and the baggage the two have to overcome to keep up with the fight.

Her pacing is stellar, and her dialogue is perfect. I adore her treatment of stalkers—very creepy. While these characters do not have to travel through the jungle, forest, or cave—the city streets, elements, crime scenes, and killers are worthy foes.

I loved this book because it shows her female character's resilience and strength in reinventing her career in fire after a debilitating accident on the job as a firefighter. Split-second decisions matter in the perilous world of fighting fire.

When Anne Ashburn finds a new career as a fire investigator, she must investigate a string of suspicious fires that endanger the lives of her former colleagues. The hero in the story teams up with Anne to find answers, and a heated attraction soon ignites. This story has enough twists and turns to confuse even the best GPS.

I’m ending with this unorthodox double feature (think Godzilla v. Kong) because girls who kill put a twist on the theme of this list. What are little girls made of? Sugar and spice and everything nice. But maybe they’re a little less nice when boys are boys.

A feminist reimagining of March’s classic 1950s novel has Claude Daigle perhaps deserving of his fate at Rhoda Penmark’s hands. What if he tormented and taunted her, and she took revenge? While the daughter in Stage’s contemporary novel walks a very narrow line that kept me unsure the whole time… the guessing was delicious. Is Hanna evil? Or misunderstood? Is her mom, Suzette, going to get her due? Or is she going insane? 

I’ve been a colleague of both Peter and Toni for many years.

Toni is a clear spiritual channel and Peter asked the questions for this book and published it. What many people may not know is Toni used to be a state attorney and as her channeling developed she did the one thing attorneys should never do and that is to ask questions of a witness without knowing what the answer would be. Yet the intuitive questions she asked resolved cases in a dramatic way.

In this book 25 souls share what happened at their moment of death and shortly afterwards.

This includes someone who died in the twin towers, a Vietnamese diplomat is tortured and shot, a serial killer who suffered the torment of a self-induced hell and two little Italian girls were too frightened to believe they had died and spent time as ghosts. A great read that… show more.

Supernatural Thrillers: Every Dead Thing by John Connolly is the first novel in Connolly’s Charlie Parker series (it contains Parker’s origin story). If you like your thrillers with a blood-curdling slice of the supernatural, run, don’t walk, to the nearest bookstore and pick up this novel. Haunted by his dead wife and daughter, Parker is an ex-cop turned private detective. And the cases Parker works—Good Lord!—best sleep with the lights on. Though John Connolly’s an Irish lad, his Parker novels take place along the East Coast (Parker lives in Portland, Maine). You’ll realize how literary and poetic Connolly’s prose is as the hairs on the back of your neck begin to rise and you refuse to investigate that sound you just heard coming from the basement.