True crime captures audiences in all media forms: TV shows, podcasts, documentaries, and, of course, books.
But what makes a good true crime read? , creator of 鈥淭he Stacks鈥� podcasts, said she doesn鈥檛 tend to go for books about isolated incidents, like a crime of passion between two people. Instead, she gravitates to books about crimes that touch on wider societal issues or impact a mass number of people.
鈥淭he ones that are about these bigger structural issues that result in crime,鈥� Thomas said, 鈥渢hose are the ones that I could just sink my teeth into for days.鈥�
Book recommendations from Traci Thomas
About cults and mass death
- 鈥�鈥� by Julia Scheeres
鈥淭his is one of my all-time favorite books. Jonestown is a fascinating story. People are familiar with this phrase, 鈥榙rink the Kool-Aid,鈥� and what happened to almost a thousand people.
鈥淏ut what Julia Scheeres does in this book is she takes us back to 1954 when Jim Jones first opens the church in Indianapolis, and then they go to California, they go to the Bay Area, and they鈥檙e doing a lot of great political work. They鈥檙e one of the reasons Harvey Milk is elected. They are knocking on doors for him. One of the pieces of the People鈥檚 Temple is racial inclusion in the 1960s and 70s.
鈥淥bviously, things spin out horribly, but what Julia Scheeres does in this book is she talks a lot about the victims and she talks a lot about nobody willingly joins a cult. There is a seduction, and there are ideals and values. She goes into that in such a beautiful way. She really honors the people whose lives were taken at Jonestown.鈥�
- 鈥�鈥� by Jeff Guinn
- 鈥溾�� by Vincent Bugliosi with Curt Gentry
- 鈥溾�� by Dave Cullen
- 鈥溾�� by Robert W. Fieseler
Individual crimes
- 鈥溾�� by Rich Cohen
鈥淚 picked up the book because I was curious, and one of the things that Rich Cohen does beautifully is he talks a lot about Jennifer Dulos鈥� life leading up to her disappearance.
鈥淗e talks about how she was a playwright and she was an artist, but she was also raised in a very wealthy family. Her father was very protective. When she was in college in New York City, he would have a car sent for her. She never went on the subway.
:And so she was torn between these two worlds, wanting to be a mother and a wealthy housewife, socialite, and then also wanting to be a downtown artist, and she was part of this playwright鈥檚 collective. And so this piece of her story, this sort of tension about who she wanted to be and then how her husband eventually comes in and sort of exploits these desires, was really, really compelling to me.鈥�
- 鈥溾�� by Alex Mar
- 鈥溾�� by Truman Capote
- 鈥溾�� by Charles Graeber
- 鈥溾�� by Sarah Weinman
- 鈥溾�� by Maureen Orth
- 鈥溾�� by Nancy Rommelmann
Political crimes
- 鈥溾�� by Paula Yoo
鈥淚 was not familiar with the Vincent Chin story. It happened in the 1980s before I was born. It was not something that I was taught in school, and I was so taken by this story. It reminded me so much of what we鈥檝e seen with Black Lives Matter, of a person who is murdered.
鈥淚t鈥檚 after his bachelor party. He鈥檚 on the street. These white men come. There鈥檚 questions about, 鈥榠s this a hate crime?鈥� There鈥檚 questions about, 鈥榳as it self-defense?鈥� There鈥檚 all these questions that we鈥檙e still grappling with now when we talk about racialized violence.
鈥淧aula Yoo lays it out so beautifully, and because it鈥檚 for a younger audience, it鈥檚 extremely clear what鈥檚 happened and it鈥檚 very easy to read, and it brings up so many questions to think about when we talk about not only what happened with Vincent Chin, but with the justice system as well as true crime and kind of consuming these stories for pleasure.鈥�
- 鈥溾�� by Simon Reeve
- 鈥溾�� by Andrew Gumbel and Roger G. Charles
- 鈥溾�� by Maureen Callahan
Organizational crime
- 鈥溾�� by Gardiner Harris
鈥溾�奍 think sometimes when we talk about true crime, people limit it to where someone dies. But I like to have a broader category of true crime. I like to include corporate crime. It鈥檚 a kind of true crime that I鈥檓 really fascinated by.
鈥淭his book about Johnson & Johnson will change the way that you think about this company for certain. Unless you already knew a lot about Johnson & Johnson.
鈥淏ut [Gardiner Harris] goes back through all of these different scandals and questionable behavior, their relationship to the [Food and Drug Administration], the money going in and out, clinical trials that they sort of zhuzh to fit their needs, the conversations that happen between Johnson & Johnson executives and the FDA and other oversight groups where Johnson & Johnson admits to knowing things that would be helpful for consumers and they choose time and again to proceed with their product instead of taking a pause and protecting their consumers. And it is extremely criminal and a fantastic read.鈥�
- 鈥溾�� by John Carreyrou
- 鈥溾�� by Paul Pringle
- 鈥�鈥� by Patrick Radden Keefe
Lyrical/crime memoir
- 鈥溾�� by Alex Marzano-Lesnevich
- 鈥溾�� by Cristina Rivera Garza
- 鈥溾�� by James Whitfield Thomson
- 鈥溾�� by Wright Thompson
Deathless crimes
- 鈥溾�� by Michael Finkel
- 鈥溾�� by Susan Orlean
- 鈥溾�� by Anna Akbari
- 鈥溾�� by Richard Behar
Traci also recommends
- 鈥溾�� by Bill James
This interview was edited for clarity.
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produced and edited this interview for broadcast with . adapted it for the web.
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