Lesser-Known True Crime
Bundy, Dahmer, Gacy, Manson, and the rest can step aside!! These stories of violent crime are from off the beaten path a bit, stories you may not have heard before even if you binge true crime podcasts and docs like it's your job. I've started with ones I've read already but that will probably change soon so feel free to recommend! Any true stories about violent criminals, detectives and/or investigators, victims, or the criminal justice system in general are fair game ☺️
created by crow-and-sparrow
last updated June, 2026
Comments
Rising Road by Sharon Davies? It's about a 100+-year-old Klan killing- mostly the trial, as the killer walked down to the station to turn himself in, but I don't read much of the genre to suggest more. 😅
this sounds perfect, thank u!!
That's an interesting list👀👀
i am a sucker for true crime: podcasts, documentaries, books, it doesn't matter i am fascinated by it all!
Oh i feel you! I will admit it never occured to me to read a true crime book but your list might change that!!
yessss join ussssss lmao
do you want autobiographies from detectives or just books about general cases? i might have a few recs!
both! there are a couple memoir-type books on the list already from a homicide detective and a CSI tech talking about some of their standout cases
ooh, okay then!
- unmasked: my life solving america's cold cases by paul holes - this is the memoir of the cold case detective who found the golden state killer! (obligatory i'll be gone in the dark rec too, but if you want lesser known books i get it!)
- grilling dahmer by patrick kennedy - memoir of a detective who investigated/interviewed dahmer
- catching a serial killer by stephen fulcher - i am yet to read it myself, but this is the memoir of the police officer who investigated christopher halliwell, a british serial killer
- the i5 killer by ann rule - a lot of ann rule books probably fit as well, she also did green river, running red about the green river killer
- babes in the wood by graham bartlett - am also yet to read this, but it's a memoir of the senior detective investigating the "babes in the wood" murders in the uk, it's a bit of an infamous case i think.
john douglas also has a bunch of books on various cases which are part-memoir too that i'd recommend, except he insists on telling several anecdotes in every book and after a while it gets fucking annoying (pre-pagebound i decided to work my way through his bibliography, i've read all 11 of them and i got fed up of it halfway through). if you want to include any of his books, just go with the classic mindhunter.
actually a couple of these i already have bookmarked for myself lol thank you again, marvelous recommendations 🤩🩸
oh i need to add it to pb but hunting evil: inside the ipswich serial murders by david wilson is an account of the investigation into stephen wright, aka suffolk strangler, a british serial killer who killed several sex workers in ipswich in the mid-00s. wilson is a well known british criminologist (i quite like his other works, including his memoir life with murderers too) who worked on the case and it's cowritten with a journalist who covered the case too!
eta: found it! it was under harrison's name, not wilson's like i expected 😅
yes yes YESSSSSS thank u so much for these!!!
heh you're welcome! i've watched so many documentaries over the years i'm trying to catch up in books now 🤭 there's a lot of famous british cases that i want to read more about, there's only so much documentaries go into 😩
sameeee i have literally watched every true crime doc on every streaming service i sub to, and even podcasts tend to cover a lot of the same cases, but there's a much wider array of books out there!! and if i can get them in audiobook format or run them through a text-to-speech program it's just like listening to a really long podcast episode lol
i'm finding i'm just getting increasingly picky with documentaries for one reason or another and just rewatching the same shows 😭 i don't like podcasts (and i find way too many of them are sensationalist or disrespectful one way or another) so books it is ig 💀😭 at least there's no shortage here either 😂
ahh i feel that, i also definitely can't stand true crime content in general that doesn't handle the topic with the appropriate level of reverence and respect, it's very ick. this is why i tend to prefer longer-form stories, like podcasts where they only cover one case per season after literal years of research and interviews, more fleshed-out docuseries that approach the case from many perspectives, and of course, BOOKS! ☺️
yeah i find books to be more interesting in terms of the level of detail and more respectful, at least i have an alternative to podcasts and shows! 😅🙂↕️
also, borrowed my list specifically on british and irish true crime cases, there's some memoirs in there from different points of view:
- love as always, mum xxx by mae west - this is the autobiography of fred and rose west's daughter mae (fred and rose west are notorious british serial killers), so it's more about her life than the case but she talks about the investigation into her parents and the aftermath in the book of course
- a killer's confession by karen edwards - i recced stephen fulcher's memoir on the christopher halliwell case in my other comment, and i recommend this book alongside it even if am yet to read both. karen is becky godden-edwards' mother (becky was one of halliwell's victims), and due to how fulcher handled her case the charge against him for her murder was dropped; when halliwell confessed to murdering becky and leading police to her body (where it's believed her body would not have been found otherwise) fulcher didn't follow proper procedure so he was never charged for her murder. i'm definitely trying to read this soon, i've just got majorly sidetracked with the pb true crime quest 💀
- for the love of julie by ann ming - this is a case i think deserves more attention! ming's daughter, julie was murdered and billy dunlop, the perpetrator was initially found not guilty and walked free, but then started going round and openly bragging about committing the murder because he couldn't get retried under the double jeopardy law. ming fought to overturn this law, and in the end dunlop ended up being the first person to be convicted following the overturning of the double jeopardy law! it's an important case that doesn't get enough attention imo, and i was pleased to discover this memoir exists.
- remembering rachel by rose callaly - a memoir by the mother of rachel callaly, who was murdered by her husband
