Titles You’ll Recognize And Some You Won’t
A good true-crime book takes you inside a world you’ll probably never enter and acquaints you with people you might best avoid. Here are six that I’ve read more than five times each and think that you’ll enjoy at least once.
1. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote (1966)
This is ground zero of true-crime entertainment. Truman Capote, who first made a splash at age 23 with the novel Other Voices, Other Rooms, spent years researching the buildup to the 1959 collision between the clean-living Clutters of Kansas and Perry Smith and Richard Hickcock — who cut the Clutters’ phone line, broke into the house, and killed four members of the family.
Claim to fame: The book created a genre, the nonfiction novel. Oh, and it has sold 100 million copies.
Infamy: The surviving Clutters hated In Cold Blood because of the way it portrays the family’s mother.
2. Wiseguy: Life in a Mafia Family by Nicolas Pileggi (1985)
The basis for the movie Goodfellas, the book describes the improbable marriage and the rise and fall of Mafia associate Henry Hill. True-crime writer Nicholas Pileggi said that, before he started the book, he had grown tired of hearing “illiterate dons” portraying themselves as “benevolent godfathers” — but he found Henry Hill fascinating because he was articulate and intelligent and had an outsider’s eye for the workings of mob operations from the ground up.
Fun fact: The author is the widower of Nora Ephron, who wrote feel-good comedies When Harry Met Sally and Sleepless in Seattle.
Misdemeanor: Wiseguy ends with Henry Hill becoming law-abiding. He did no such thing in reality.
3. Fatal Vision by Joe McGinniss (1983)
Handsome, overachieving Special Forces surgeon Jeff MacDonald seemed to have an ideal life until his wife, Colette, and little daughters were slaughtered in their house in Fort Bragg in 1970. Jeff, 26, said that acid-crazed hippies did it, but he ultimately was found guilty of the three murders. The author gives the backstory of the MacDonalds’ blond-on-blonde union as well as the transition of Freddy Kassab — Colette’s stepfather — from defender of his popular son-in-law to the driving force behind his conviction.
Controversy: Jeff MacDonald successfully sued Joe McGinniss, to whom he had given access to his life because he thought the writer would portray him as innocent.
Intrigue continues: Now past 80 years of age, MacDonald is imprisoned in FCI Cumberland but still has many supporters. The late New Yorker magazine journalist Janet Malcolm advocated for MacDonald’s innocence.
4. Casino: Love and Honor in Las Vegas by Nicholas Pileggi (1995)
If you liked the movie version of Casino and are interested in how betting emporiums worked back when men in pinky rings owned them and people wore gowns and suits to play slots, you’ll want to read the book version. It traces the life of Frank Rosenthal, an oddsmaker who looked nothing like Robert De Niro but nonetheless ingratiated himself to organized crime figures by giving them sports-betting tips that paid off. They, in turn, recruited him to manage the Stardust and two other Las Vegas casinos with mob ties. The book also details the early life of Geri McGee Rosenthal, the showgirl who entered into a mostly dreadful marriage with Frank.
Definitely an antihero: The real Frank Rosenthal was more pompous and egotistical and abusive to his wife than “Frank Rothstein” was in director Martin Scorsese’s film.
Power trip: Rosenthal really did micromanage his employees in a quest for quality control. He fired a union-protected kitchen worker for undercooking eggs.
5. Bloodletters and Badmen: A Narrative Encyclopedia of American Criminals from the Pilgrims to the Present by Jay Robert Nash (1973)
You have to love a writer who tells you what color Al Capone’s eyes were and how tall Bonnie Parker was. The physical descriptions of the criminals are fun, but the big draw is Nash’s storytelling. The encyclopedia includes many now-forgotten offenders, like Ernest Ingenito, who gunned down seven of his in-laws dispersed around southern New Jersey in 1950, and Earle Nelson, “who made a habit of strangling landladies in the late 1920s.” The hard-covered edition of the book has more pictures than the paperback.
Summary offenses: Nash clearly takes dramatic license in some of his vignettes.
Difference of opinion: Unlike Truman Capote, Nash had no compassion for Perry Smith.
6. On the Run: A Mafia Childhood by Gina and Gregg Hill (2004)
Although they rejected his criminality, the children of Henry Hill inherited his ability to describe an esoteric world from the inside and out. Their side of the story reveals more of Henry’s id than Wiseguy and Goodfellas did. Gina and Gregg write about a life of garbage bags full of marijuana, adult sex parties that took place in front of them as kids, the uncertainty of having an alcoholic dad whose cash reserve could go from five figures to zero in a day, and the heartbreak of having to move around the country after the family entered the witness protection program.
All in the picture: The book reveals early family photos that satisfy readers’ curiosity about how they looked.
Quite a racquet: The son was a USTA-ranked tennis player as a teenager.
That’s all for this post. Please make sure to leave a comment or share the post on social media.
Until next time, cheers — Rebecca Reisner
