Sylvia Likens horrible torture murder was also covered in Kate Millet’s The Basement, and Patty Wheat wrote a fictionized version called By Sanction of The Victim.
The reason I “like” this book is that Cahill himself was so disturbed after finishing the book that he turned to adventure/nature writing to clear his head. His career change turned out to be good for him and readers alike.
I haven’t read it, but The Good Nurse: A True Story of Medicine, Madness, and Murder has gotten pretty good reviews and is quite recent. It is about Charles Cullen, perhaps the most prolific serial killer in US history.
I read this book a long time ago when I was a kid (and probably shouldn’t have because it really affected me–and I read things like Helter Skelter without any ill effects at the same age): 83 Hours Till Dawn, by Gene Miller. It’s the story of Barbara Mackle, who was kidnapped and buried alive (she survived). It might be tame by today’s standards–like I said, I read it as a kid in the '70s–but the thought of being buried alive just freaked me out.
ETA: I see it was already mentioned upthread, so I’ll just second it.
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.
The Iceman by Philip Carlo. The story of hitman Richard Kuklinski.
The usual Mafia hitman stuff, most of it reasonably entertaining and interesting. Except for one hit, which was long and drawn out and filmed by motion-activated camera. He kidnaps and kills a guy at the behest of a particular mafioso, and presents his film as proof of the hit. Two mafiosi walk out of the screening. They couldn’t handle it. It was so gruesome I can’t even bring myself to tell anybody about it.
Which is unusual for me. I thought it was hilarious how he stabbed a persistent panhandler to death while on his way back to the car from another hit. But the other thing, the thing he filmed, I wish I’d never heard of it, quite frankly.
There’s one very valuable lesson to take from reading this book: if you’re in a public place and somebody holds a gun to your head and tells you that you must come with him to a less public place or he will kill you - do not go with him. Just let him kill you.
I first read “Helter Skelter” when I was about 14 years old. I regularly baby-sat for a family that had it, and would read it after I put the kids to bed. I re-read it a few years ago, and understood it better - and was just as scared.
As for Barbara Mackle, someone did an update on her a few years ago. Her “best friend”, a young man who was a major player in her rescue, is now her husband of over 40 years. They have two grown sons.
Read anything by Max Haines. The stories are short enough for my fly-like attention span and he writes as if you’re sitting across from him having a coffee. He used to write a column for the Toronto Sun. Max Haines - Wikipedia
I have a feeling that if I re-read it now, it would probably affect me more than it did as a kid (and I was even younger than you–I remember my fifth-grade teacher looking at me funny when I brought it in to read in the library). I had no frame of reference–to me, it was just another horror book, and I loved those.
Good to hear Barbara Mackle ended up with good things happening to her. After that ordeal, she deserves to.
I just finished reading it and found it fascinating. It provides a lot of historical context. Manson was certainly in the right time and place to recruit his “family;” Haight Ashbury as the Summer of Love collapsed into hard drugs and despair. I thought the book almost sad, not just for the victims of his crimes, but also for the members of the “family” who gave up everything to literally worship him. He destroyed many lives.
According to South Park, it’s called murder porn.
I liked most of John Douglas’ FBI profiler books, although he’s sometimes full of himself. He was the character that Jack Douglas in Silence of the Lambs was based on. His books go through some of the classic crime cases, so it’s interesting seeing the evolution of procedures used through the years.
But yeah, In Cold Blood.
I’ve only just started this one, but it’s good so far: People Who Eat Darkness. It’s about Lucie Blackman, a Western girl who lived in Tokyo, who disappeared in 2000, and the man accused of killing her.
That too. He is an excellent travel writer. One of the best.
Blood and Money, by Thomas Thomson.
I believe I have mentioned elsewhere on the Dope that I went to high school with one of the major witnesses in the Lilla Paulus trial: her daughter Mary Jo.