Though I’m not your typical true-crime reader, there are two recent books that feature elements of the genre that I am particularly keen to recommend.
The first is a book our reviewer calls “a well-tempered blend of true crime and literary lore.” In Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee, Casey Cep explores the work of one of literature’s most intriguing mysteries, Harper Lee. For years after the publication of her masterpiece, To Kill a Mockingbird, she retreated from the spotlight, her creative spark lying dormant. However, a series of Alabama murders involving a reverend and his family piqued her curiosity, and she began a project, The Reverend, that was later abandoned. Furious Hours is packed with elements of Southern voodoo, fraud, murder, and vigilante justice, and Cep’s immersive narrative, “with the accessible erudition of podcast-style journalism,” will keep the pages turning late into the night.
An equally complex narrative—on a global scale—drives Atavist Magazine co-founder Evan Ratliff’s The Mastermind: Drugs. Empire. Murder. Betrayal. The book stars a rogue computer programmer named Paul Le Roux, who, our reviewer writes in a starred review, “discovered early on that cyberspace was a frontier in which to grow rich serving humankind’s lesser instincts: pornography, trolling, gambling, addictions of various kinds. Eventually, as the author foreshadows in an opening salvo of incidents, he founded a crime network with many nodes across the world, one with hired killers, corrupt doctors, software specialists, and countless other players.” It’s a cyberthriller mixed with a cat-and-mouse chase as Ratliff follows Le Roux, his many pursuers, and his paths of destruction around the globe. Our reviewer calls it “a wholly engrossing story that joins the worlds of El Chapo and Edward Snowden; both disturbing and memorable,” and it’s the perfect book for readers who enjoyed Nick Bilton’s American Kingpin.
Eric Liebetrau is the nonfiction and managing editor.
