Blood Trail
(Steven Walker and Rick Reed)
This memorably grimy account of violent-crimes-detective-turned-fraud-investigator Reed’s pursuit of Joseph Weldon Brown starts out overwritten. Let it settle down. It’s a brisk, colloquial rendering of Brown’s hopeless childhood, then his (notably inept) career of larceny and violence culminating in the murder of his partner, Ginger Gasaway, whose remains Brown notoriously scattered across three counties.
Freed to Kill: The True Story of Serial Murderer Larry Eyler
(Gera-Lind Kolarik with Wayne Klatt)
The writing is relatively run-of-the-mill, but this is one of the few book-length treatments of serial killer Larry Eyler, whose body count was higher than it should have been thanks to 1) lack of cooperation between police agencies and 2) an improper search that let Eyler loose to kill again.
Hell’s Princess: The Mystery of Belle Gunness, Butcher of Men
(Harold Schechter)
The Lady Bluebeard of La Porte County’s crimes were so vile that a densely footnoted academic overview is the only way to write about the case without sickening the reader. Schechter is the professor for the job. He can’t entirely avoid phrases like “a jumble of putrefied body parts,” but his biography and analysis of Gunness is compelling and complete.
Indiana Gothic: A Story of Adultery and Murder in an American Family
(Pope Brock)
A politician’s affair with his sister-in-law; a pregnancy they couldn’t otherwise explain; a broad daylight shooting on Main Street; a pioneering insanity defense. It sounds like pulp fiction, and that’s how Brock writes the true story of his great-grandfather Ham Dillon’s murder and his family’s enduring shame. This volume is rich in turn-of-the-last-century detail, and the prose moves right along.
Murders That Made Headlines: Crimes of Indiana
(Jane Simon Ammeson)
This slim anthology focuses on long-ago cases that dominated contemporary news, then fell below the horizon. It’s packed with archival graphics, grisly details (a reservoir drained, in vain, to find Pearl Bryan’s head), and histrionic headlines. The Harry and Nettie Diamond chapter is a strangely nostalgic treat.
Public Enemies: America’s Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933–34
(Bryan Burrough)
Burrough’s 2004 book about the country’s “first, and greatest, war on crime” became a Johnny Depp–starring film in 2009. But the text is plenty cinematic on its own, never more so than when it zooms in on the bank-robbing, jail-breaking John Dillinger, who, of course, became Public Enemy No. 1.
Seventy Times Seven: A True Story of
Murder and Mercy
(Alex Mar)
When a “beloved Bible teacher” was murdered during a 1985 home invasion, few objected when her killer, 10th-grader Paula Cooper, got the death penalty. Then the victim’s grandson publicly forgave Cooper—and campaigned to commute her sentence. A holistic account of the ripple effects of a horrific crime on two families, the book takes on multiple criminal justice issues—racial bias, prosecutorial tunnel vision, Lake County corruption—without feeling like homework.
