18 books like Shadow play
JFK
"Her tale is often engaging . . . the feisty schoolteacher emerges ultimately as something of a folk heroine."-Publishers WeeklyNovember 22, 1963, is a day not easily forgotten. A sunny, picturesque Dallas day quickly turned into calamity when several mysterious shots descended on the presidential motorcade at Dealey Plaza near the Texas School Book Depository.Amid the confusion were two people…
Shares: Mord, USA, Assassination, True Crime
The only living witness
Michaud and Aynesworth are a reporter and an investigator team who interviewed serial killer Ted Bundy while he was on death row in Florida. This volume chronicles his activities throughout several states but is at its best in a long section of transcripts from the interview in which, while he never admits his quilt, Bundy offers vivid details of the crimes and commentary on the mindset of a…
Shares: Murder - General, True Crime
Separating fools from their money
What do Michael Milken and Martha Stewart have in common? (Answer: Both became public scapegoats for an outrageous era of greed and excess.) What was the most outrageous party thrown by a financial baron of the twentieth century? (Answer: Tough call, but either Michael Milken's Predators Ball in 1985, or Dennis Kozlowski's Sardinian birthday bash in 2001, with its vodka-spouting sculpture.) Which…
Shares: USA, True Crime
Killer Clown
He was a model citizen. A hospital volunteer. And one of the most sadistic serial killers of all time. But few people could see the cruel monster beneath the colorful clown makeup that John Gacy wore to entertain children in his Chicago suburb. Few could imagine what lay buried beneath his house of horrors—until a teenaged boy disappeared before Christmas in 1978, leading prosecutor Terry…
Shares: Murder - General, True Crime
Hit #29
The New York Times–bestselling author of Killer: The Autobiography of a Mafia Hit Man reveals the true story of his most harrowing contract murder.
"Joey the Hit Man" was a Bronx-born hired assassin who achieved widespread notoriety after writing a bestselling memoir and appearing on the David Susskind show. In this "down-to-earth realistic account," Joey tells the riveting story behind the…
Shares: Murder - General, True Crime
Forensic detective
Death. It's not only inevitable and frightening, it's intriguing and fascinating--especially today, when science continues to make ever more stunning advances in the investigation of the oldest and darkest of mysteries. To discover the how and why of death, unearth its roots, and expose the mechanics of its grim handiwork is, at least in some sense, to master it. And in the process, if a criminal…
Shares: Murder - General, True Crime
Invisible Darkness
Invisible Darkness is the story of one of the more bizarre cases in recent memory--killings so sensational that they prompted the Canadian government, in the interests of justice, to silence its national press and to lock foreign journalists out of the courts.To all appearances, Paul and Karla Bernardo had a fairytale marriage--beautiful working-class girl weds bright upper-middle-class guy and…
Shares: True Crime
Nice Girl
Nice Girl? is a 1941 American musical comedy film directed by William A. Seiter and starring Deanna Durbin, Franchot Tone, Walter Brennan, Robert Stack, and Robert Benchley. Based on the play Nice Girl? by Phyllis Duganne, the film is about a young girl who finds herself attracted to one of her fathers business partners who comes to town to give her father a scholarship for his dietary studies.
Shares: True Crime
Outlaws
What's it like to be an outlaw biker? 'We're dd magnets,' one of them tells Adam Shand. 'Drunks in bars like to test themselves against a so-called outlaw.'
Once seen as a free-wheeling, brawling, pleasure-seeking bunch of misfits rolling down the highways, bikers are now cast as social bogeymen. If you believe the dire warnings of the media and politicians, they are an organised crime threat on…
Shares: True Crime
The Innocent Man
Murder and injustice in a small townJohn Grisham's first work of non-fiction, an exploration of small town justice gone terribly awry, is his most extraordinary legal thriller yet. In the major league draft of 1971, the first player chosen from the State of Oklahoma was Ron Williamson. When he signed with the Oakland A's, he said goodbye to his hometown of Ada and left to pursue his dreams of big…
Shares: Murder - General, True Crime
Donnie Brasco
Posing as jewel thief "Donnie Brasco," FBI agent Joseph D. Pistone carried out the most audacious sting operation ever, working undercover for six years to infiltrate the flamboyant community of mafia soldiers, "connected guys," captains, and godfathers.Now his unforgettable eyewitness account brings to pulsating life the entire world of wiseguys—their code of honor and their treachery, their…
Shares: USA, True Crime
Breaking and entering
Shares: USA, True Crime
Shares: USA, True Crime
The Authentic Life of Billy, The Kid
Hankering for a mostly true tale about the hard-living desperadoes who inhabited America's desert Southwest in the mid-1800s? This biography of the ill-fated gunslinger Billy, the Kid was written by Pat Garrett, the sheriff who shot Billy down. Although some historians now question the veracity of some of the self-aggrandizing bluster Garrett and his ghostwriter included in the book, The…
Shares: True Crime
Last Yakuza
The Last Yakuza tells the history of the yakuza like it’s never been told before.Makoto Saigo is half-American and half-Japanese in small-town Japan with a set of talents limited to playing guitar and picking fights. With rock stardom off the table, he turns toward the only place where you can start from the bottom and move up through sheer merit, loyalty, and brute force — the yakuza.Saigo,…
Shares: True Crime
Seven Bones
Seven Bones is the story of one of the more bizarre murder investigations in Australia’s criminal history. Two wives die in suspicious circumstances: co-incidence or, as husband Thomas Keir describes it, ‘bad luck’?Arriving on the scene, Detective Peter Seymour realised he was dealing with the world’s unluckiest husband or a serial wife killer. Keir’s ‘grieving husband’ act was suddenly in…
Shares: True Crime
A Talent to Deceive
The kidnapping and murder of Charles Lindbergh's infant son, and the subsequent trial and execution of Bruno Richard Hauptmann, have been a source of fascination for more than 70 years. Now, for the first time, William Norris delves into sources of information ignored by previous investigators and comes up with the identity of the true culprit. Lindbergh is exposed as having obstructed the…
Shares: True Crime
The trial of Dr. Adams
Taken from a review:
Here is the accused, Dr. John Adams, being tried for the murder of Mrs. Morell (after rumors connected with other ""mysterious"" deaths) six years previously (there were 16 other, earlier charges). Then come the nurses in attendance on Mrs. Morell, next the doctors in the hands of the prosecution. The defense takes over the cross-examination and, after the closing speeches,…
Shares: True Crime
Born Killers
But no matter how many people they have killed, no matter how many lives they have ruined and whatever the nature of their sickening crimes, serial killers are still human. Analysing the early years of the lives of men like Jeffrey Dahmer, who abused and killed 17 young men, offers a fascinating insight into the effects of a dysfunctional or abusive childhood.
Criminologists Christopher…
Shares: True Crime