63 Books Like Never the Sinner

Despite being published in 1975, Hal Higdon’s book about the Leopold and Loeb case remains the definitive account, at least to me.

If you’re looking for a factual, in-depth look at the crime, investigation, and sentencing hearing, look no further. Higdon was able to interview and correspond with dozens of people who were close to the case and who personally knew the killers and victim. He weaved those recollections into the narrative along with newspaper reports and quotes from the court documents in addition to the rest of his vast research, which gives his book a wonderful richness and depth. 

This pick is not without some caveats. This book, Nathan Leopold’s autobiography, was written while he was trying to get paroled from prison and it has to be taken in that context.

There are lies and omissions, but there are also harrowing sections describing the brutality that prisoners faced in the 1920s and genuine emotion when he discusses his complicated feelings for Richard Loeb. There’s no better place to go for information about his life in prison, or to get a feel for his personality, as long as you can read between the lines and remain skeptical when things seem a little too good to be true.

The Hunting Accident is a graphic novel that explores a fictionalized version of the life of Matt Rizzo: a prisoner whom Leopold knew in the 1930s.

While the book is more focused on Rizzo’s story, Leopold also plays a big part, and I recommend it because it’s a very unique way to experience this story. Rizzo was blinded while committing the crime which got him sent to prison, and the book focuses on Rizzo adjusting to living without his sight while Leopold adjusts to living without Loeb, who was murdered shortly before Rizzo’s arrival.

The artwork is detailed and sometimes disturbing as it portrays the pair navigating the prison and searching for purpose, connections, and meaning in their lives. 

If you’re someone who would like to dive more deeply into the sources from the case, this book is a great place to start.

The book’s author, Maureen McKernan, wrote half a dozen articles for The Chicago Tribune about the case in 1924, and then worked with defense lawyers Clarence Darrow and Walter Bachrach to compile this primer of the important facts and sources. In addition to a solid summary of the case, this book contains large portions of the actual confessions, psychiatric reports, testimony, speeches, and the Judge’s final decision from the hearing itself.

As the book was published in 1924, there are omissions of some subjects, notably homosexuality, but this is still an excellent introduction to deeper research.

Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb set out to commit the perfect crime and ended up in newspapers as the perpetrators of “the crime of the century.” They kidnapped and murdered a teenage boy in Chicago in 1924, but both Leopold and Loeb were still considered boys themselves at the time. Clarence Darrow defended them at trial, arguing that they were guilty but that the situation had extenuating circumstances. Baatz’s book explores how two college students from good families ended up in prison for murder. Leopold’s family even came from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, near where I currently live, so even though the case is almost 100 years old, it’s not as distant as it might seem.

This book, about racism, among other matters, helped open my eyes to the humanity of all people and showed me, in particular, the ways that cruelty and racism exist in our cultures and subcultures. When I read this book, I was fresh out of five years in the Air Force (1971) and had just experienced the caste system of military life.

Prior to that, I'd lived, as a child and teenager, in a community in which racism and fundamentalist religion were taken for granted as givens of the universe. When I read this book, I realized the power of literature to open a person to meanings previously absent in their life.

In 1920s Chicago, the theater and the courtroom collided as a pair of men dropped dead in the vicinity of beautiful, duplicitous women. The musical Chicago has always been one of my favorites, and I was delighted to read this book about the real women who inspired Velma Kelly and Roxie Hart. It did not disappoint.

Douglas Perry tells the story of Beulah and Belva with all the flair and drama of the musical. I will never forget reading about how callously Beulah Annan sipped cocktails and listened to music for hours as her lover lay bleeding on the floor. It sent chills down my spine.

The book that proves your mother was right about what would happen “if:”

A story of a teenage runaway in l970 who gets herself into “trouble,” that offers a visceral kaleidoscope of the adventures of the era—the good and the bad—and makes you feel like you personally went through it all. It echoes through today with its theme of choice that is taken away from young men fleeing the draft, and from young women without governance over their own bodies.

Laura March is serving as temporary guardian of a little refugee girl who may be the next heir to a fortune when a man claiming to be the child’s father turns up at her door—and when shortly afterward he turns up dead, Laura is both a suspect and a target for the real killer in this atmospheric whodunit. The fun of this one lies in its wintry 1950s Chicago setting: the foggy streets, high-rise apartment buildings, corner phone booths and drugstores, and department stores decorated for Christmas.

Winner of the International Latino Book Awards, and a Bram Stoker Finalist, this adult horror novels tackles the history of Chicago, highlighting the local Latin community.

Children of Chicago twists the story of the Pied Piper, with clean prose and a quick pace. I especially loved the main character, a female Puerto Rican detective who breaks all the stereotypes of both cops and women in fiction.

It’s a supernatural horror tale for adults that will make you want to read the rest of Pelayo’s impressive work.