Books like Manson in His Own Words — picked by fans

I recommend this book as often as I can. Edgier and more disturbing than the film adaptation, Heller’s novel offers not one but two women doing terrible things.

Sheba is the art instructor hiding her illicit meetings with a student and running around like a teenager in what must be one of recent literature’s more reprehensible midlife crises. Barbara is the cynical older woman, the veteran teacher with a busy schedule and a barren personal life.

Sheba appeals to Barbara as a friend, to keep her secret. Barbara responds with feigned concern, then with affection, desire, jealousy, and a malicious desire to control Sheba, to jerk her chain and watch her dance. For sheer emotional power dynamics between two women, this book is hard to beat.

It’s rare that I find a book that plunges me so deeply into the psychology of a character.

Grace is the protagonist of Alias Grace. She’s cunning. She’s bold. She’s possibly a murderess. The most fascinating aspect of Grace to me is that she is based on a real-life character from Canada in the mid-1800s.

Throughout the whole book, I kept wondering about her—not just the fictional character, but the real one too—was this what she was really thinking? Was this how she really behaved?

I found her voice in the novel to be absolutely undeniable. You want to believe everything she says, but at the same time, you mistrust her...

The Cocktail Waitress is the last work of total master James M. Cain, posthumously published in 2014. I started this on a hike and did not stop listening until it was done, netting me quite a bit of cardio. This firsthand explanation of a tabloid murder scandal, as told by its prime suspect, is often hilarious, surprisingly feminist, and darkly sinister. As the titular waitress innocently recalls meeting and marrying a much older millionaire and his baffling demise soon after, it’s clear she’s lying through her teeth. But deducing how and why is the fun of the book. Still, the ending is a gut punch. My book hangover was a solid 72 hours (could’ve been the hike though). 

This. Book. 

Wow. 

I felt changed after I read it and talked about it with everyone who would listen. Not only is this book a riveting, fast-paced read, but it’s an important novel about assault, grooming, and the abuse of power.

The protagonist is an aspiring teenaged singer who gets discovered and then manipulated and abused by a much older celebrity R&B artist. When she wakes up with her hands covered in his blood and finds him dead, she realizes she has no memory of what occurred the night before. This novel was enticing as much as it was heartbreaking.

Best known for Helter Skelter--his classic 1975 true crime memoir on prosecuting the Manson family, former Los Angeles deputy DA Vincent Bugliosi wrote this book later about a complicated but lesser-known double-homicide case he tried in 1966, three years before the Manson murders occurred. As the prosecutor on these cases, Bugliosi boasted access to background details that only an insider can share, merging psychological analysis with trial strategy concerns. Echoing themes of the noir thriller Double Indemnity, this true account unveils the plot of two lovers to murder their respective spouses and explains the complex police work required to catch them.

I find Tom Ripley such a wonderful character—a con man who commits crimes under the guise of someone else, a male protagonist written by a lesbian.

I love the levels of deception the reader is pulled in, so is on the side of the criminal throughout, hoping for him not to get caught in his awful, amoral behaviour.

It is a masterful use of the narrative voice in crime fiction at its best.

The third of the five-book Riplead series, Ripley’s Game throws a twist on the traditional cat-and-mouse thriller.

The youthful homoerotic panic of The Talented Mr. Ripley has calmed down, and Tom Ripley is now a married man with a château in France. Trouble begins when he plays a game with his neighbor, Jonathan Trevanny—a man with a terminal illness, desperate to leave money to his wife and child. Ripley sets him up for an offer he can’t refuse: murder for hire.

I find the best facet of the novel to be Ripley’s begrudging humanity. He softens enough to help Jonathan when the job of garroting organized crime thugs is too horrible for him to stomach. While not explicitly gay, the queer vibes are strong as Ripley’s growing tenderness for Jonathan helps to humanize him.

Stagolee, the bad man who will not back down, is an icon of African American mythology. His defining moment, the Christmas night murder of Billy Lyons is the subject of folk and blues songs from the turn of the twentieth century to the present day. Though many know the story, before Cecil Brown’s book, most did not realize that the story was true. On Christmas night, 1895, in St. Louis, “Stack” Lee Shelton shot Billy Lyons in a fight over a Stetson hat. Stagolee Shot Billy documents the events leading to the murder while shining a light on the culture, attitudes, and politics of the St. Louis black community in the 1890s. The shooting of Billy Lyons is a Gilded Age murder that continues to resonate.

I knew the author when I worked for his literary agent in London, and this is a fascinating and frightening look at the London crime world of the Kray Twins. They ruthlessly ruled parts of London, including the East End, and was an essential background re-read when I wrote my own London crime novel. I was trying to show behind the scenes of the world of striptease, but this book is a reminder of what’s behind even that behind-the-scenes world. I used to send a 6-monthly royalty cheque to their mother as their share for co-operating with the book, which is why it’s so authentic.

I loved this book because it put me right there in the life, with all the violence, plots, girlfriends, and craziness. Author Nicholas Pileggi is a master of the craft. He drew me in immediately by capturing the voice of Henry Hill; mob associate turned informant.

I learned things I didn’t know–and some things I didn’t want to know–about the life. When I saw Goodfellas, the Martin Scorsese movie based on the book, it all rang true again.