As I wrote a few months ago, with regard to true crime books, "All stories are worth telling well, but especially the difficult ones, when we need the writer's assurance as we walk down the dark passage." As someone who occasionally takes on such stories, I'm interested in how and why other true crime writers approach the work. My lead-off interview is with Kathryn Miles, author of "TRAILED: One Woman's Quest to Solve the Shenandoah Murders," about the horrific unsolved 1996 murders of two young women with Shenandoah National Park. Miles does what the best true crime writers do. She takes on the awesome responsibility of explaining murder, with compassion and clear-eyes and deeply empathetic reporting. As she writes in TRAILED, "Maybe, just maybe, when two selfless, joyful, beautiful humans die in a place, what's left behind is not the agony of their deaths, but the brilliance of their lives." I loved her book and have links to it and 13 other favorite true crime books in the show notes.
"What Man Can Do to Man: 13 True Crime Books That Get It Right," by Nancy Rommelmann
Trailed: One Woman's Quest to Solve the Shenandoah Murders, by Kathryn Miles. More about Miles at kathrynmiles.net
Shot in the Heart, by Mikal Gilmore
Lost Girls, by Robert Kolker
Blood Will Out, by Walter Kirn
The Adversary, by Emmanuel Carrere
Columbine, by Dave Cullen
Down City, by Leah Carroll
I’ll Be Gone in the Dark, by Michelle McNamara
Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland
The Journalist and the Murderer, by Janet Malcom
Helter Skelter, by Vincent Bugliosi
In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote
Crossed Over, by Beverly Lowry
Under the Banner of Heaven, by Jon Krakauer