Norman Mailer’s The Executioner’s Song, which is about Gary Gilmore, is astonishly good. And if you’re prepared to give comic books a try, Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell’s From Hell is a terrific evocation of the Ripper killings and the Victorian London that produced them. The movie was terrible, but the book’s great.
Evidence of Love. Fabulous book about a woman ax murdered a friend. Oldie, but goodie.
With friends like these, who needs enemies? 
Death in the Priory is a really good companion to Suspicions. It’s about an unsolved poisoning case, but the pool of suspects was and is really small, just like in the Road Hill House case. The first part is a description of the life and times of the people involved, the second is a narrative of the night of the murder, the third part is the aftetmath: the trial, and what happened to all the people afterwards. Suspicions is slightly better, but Priory comes really, really close IMHO.
The Monster of Florence by Douglas Preston and Mario Spezi
The true story is not of your time frame but FWIW there is a connection with Knox/Kercher murder (prosecutor and current judge)
Also George Clooney will star in the movie of the MoF.
But of course it’s not nonfiction. Even as far as fiction goes it’s pretty bizarre fantasy.
Thunderstruck by Erik Larsen is another good book about the Crippen case, but Larsen juxtaposes it with Marconi’s invention of radio. He’s pretty fair to Cora, too.
I also second Devil in the White City. Larsen, in general, is good reading.
I was going to recommend this one…
I’d recommend The Piano Teacher, by Robert Tannenbaum. It’s a somewhat frustrating story of the investigation of a serial killer in the late sixties/early seventies New York, and evokes that grubby era in NYC history very well. Very creepy tale about a mild-mannered guy who lured young actresses into his teaching studio and grew obsessive, then killed them. Worse, the DA kept making poor decisions regarding letting him out on bail (or possibly parole, I don’t remember clearly), which led to more tragedy.
Tannenbaum was one of the investigators on the case and his writing is quite captivating. Note that according to Amazon, the newer paperback editions are bizarrely high priced, but Kindle editions and used copies are reasonable.
(I found my hardcover copy in the trash pile in my apartment building. I thought it was gonna be about musicians so I saved it from the incinerator. I’m very glad I did, although I didn’t get much sleep for a few nights as I gobbled the book down!)
Edited to add: OH I just thought of another book. Classic Crimes, edited by Julian Symons from the works of William Roughead. Tells the true gruesome tales of murder in 18th and 19th century Scotland and England. If you’re looking for colorful true crimes this is definitely a terrific addition to your library.
This. Rule is a good writer, and this is her very best; she is right along with the reader as the story unfolds. I don’t care for some of her other books, but this is an absolute classic. (I’d also recommend her book Small Sacrifices, about Diane Downs, for those interested.)
I’m currently reading The Killer Department by Robert Cullen. The story of Andrei Chikatilo that was made into the HBO movie Citizen X. It’s a good read and offers a lot of info about the nature of police and the justice system under the soviet system. It’s out of print, but used copies can be found on amazon for around $1.
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While I’m picking your brains, does anyone know a really good book in this vein about Jack the Ripper? I read the gobsmackingly bad Patricia Cornwell one (on one page she’s pointing out that X is a possibility because there’s no evidence that it didn’t happen, and by the next page she’s using X as a proven fact and the basis for a whole theory…) and I could do with an antidote.
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While not as…epic…as The Suspicions, I got a lot of fun out of Jack The Ripper: The Pocket Essential Guide by Mark Whitehead and Miriam Rivett.
It has a narrative portion, where it goes through the murders and the investigation in chronological order, while using the “pauses” between murders to discuss various parallel phenomena, such as Jacks role the development of a newspaper culture, police procedures at the time, a short Abberline bio, why officials were worried about a Peterloo repeat or and anti-Semitic riot, and of course, how prostitution worked.
It also takes the time to flesh out the various investigators, coroners, witnesses, families and so on. I really like the way it takes the time to include a bio on each victim (the “five canonicals”, plus Smith and Taybram), and describe how the families were contacted, and who attended the funerals.
Then there are several chapters discussing (and, mostly, debunking) the most popular theories. It takes great care to rip Patricia Cornwall to shreds, which you should enjoy. It also discussed Jack in popular fiction, Jack on stage and screen, Jack as an urban renewer and developer, and has an excellent guide to further reading.
My favorite part of this book is that it doesn’t conclude with any theory of its own, its a more “just the facts” approach. It’s well written too. There is also a really great audiobook available, where the reader, Lynsey Frost, does a great job of alternating between a serious, compassionate voice when discussing the victims, and a tongue in cheek tone when describing the more outlandish theories and blunders.
Can you tell I really like this book?
Oh! You just reminded me: *anything *by the great Edmund Pearson, who wrote in the 1920s-40s. My grandmother had a collection of his books, so I grew up reading his true crime collections. He happily admitted that he was unhealthily obsessed with Lizzie Borden.
I will add my voice to the recommendations of:
The Devil in the White City
The Monster of Florence
The Killer of Little Shepherds
The Poisoner’s Handbook
Agent Zigzag
Now I’m off to track down some of the other books mentioned here and in the other threads…
Oh, while I’m at it, the motherlode of information about the Jack the Ripper case is http://www.casebook.org/ - many of the published authors on the subject and most of the genuine JtR experts in the world post there. WARNING: discovering that website will pretty much eat a couple of weeks out of your life, leaving you very well-informed but probably still wondering who, in fact, actually did it.
OTHO, under no circumstances whatsoever even think about reading Patricia Cornwall’s book on the Ripper. It is extremely poorly written, tedious to read, and doesn’t make any sense. If all the “might maybes” were eliminated, the book would be about half it’s length. I found it on a bus, brought it home and read it. I was overcharged.
I will never read anything of Cornwall’s ever again. Whoever told her she could write was mentally ill.
Sidney D Kirkpatrick’s [A Cast of Killers](A Cast of Killers) about the mysterious 1922 murder of director William Desmond Taylor in Hollywood is a great read.
The book begins when Kirkpatrick embarks on a biography of King Vidor and discovers among his papers his plans for a film about Taylor.
He unravels a terrific tale full of mystery, lust, anger and cover ups.
However truTV Crime Library, another good source for the crime buff, questions the accuracy of the book.
The only reliable source of info on that case, though, is Bruce Long’s excellent and addictive but lengthy website Tayolorology.com. The fact that Bruce does not put forth a pet suspect makes me trust him (me, I still think Mary Miles Minter’s mother dunnit).
It’s not a single narrative, but if you liked the part of Suspicions that dealt with how the Road Hill House case inspired literature, then you might like The Invention of Murder. It describes lots and lots of real life murder cases from way back in the 1700’s and forward to Jack the Ripper, and how each case affected the way murder and crime was dealt with in the popular mind.
There are lots of famous ones (Burke and Hare, Dr. Crippen, Amelia Dyer, Mary Anne Cotton and many more) but also reasonably obscure ones, as well as “murder epidemics” like the so-called Poisoning Panic, and cases that were never classed as murder in their own time, like the mistreatment and death from abuse of workhouse children.
Green River Running Red about Green River killer Gary Ridgeway is also very good. While Rule prefers to write about lesser publicized crimes, she made an exception with this one. I appreciated that she wrote about the victims as victims, not just "prostitutes who got what they deserved.
Hijack: Ann Rule once wrote that she would like to write a book on the Stayner Brothers–Steven who was abducted by a pedophile and held for seven years, and Cory who is a serial killer now on Death Row. That would be some fine reading.