New books

Why do we read true crime stories? Is it a voyeuristic interest in the details of someone else's misfortune? Do we enjoy a reminder that our own lives, mundane and uneventful by comparison, could be much worse? Or perhaps our interest represents something more ennobling: a desire to understand the elements of the criminal justice system (police, courts, prisons), the conditions of society that breed crime, and the psychology of criminal behavior in the hope of making it all better. Most likely we just appreciate nonfiction writing with the high literary value...

--Jon L. Breen in the Weekly Standard's review of True Crime: An American Anthology

A New Volume of Kentucky Murders Author Keven McQueen has issued a new volume of short stories from Kentucky's wondrous history of murder as library patrons across the Bluegrass state (and beyond) are still tussling over his previous collections. The new book is Cruelly Murdered. The author is an avid admirer of Edmund L. Pearson, and I thoroughly enjoy his sardonic style.

A New Old Gotham Murder We just can't seem to get enough historical murder from New York City. The latest book to retell a forgotten tale from thereabouts is Butchery on Bond Street - Sexual Politics and The Burdell-Cunningham Case in Ante-bellum New York [Amazon; B&N] by Benjamin Feldman. The  author has a website devoted to the book  (and a glowing blurb from Patricia Cline Cohen, author of a masterpiece of historical New York butchery, The Murder of Helen Jewett). 

'Letters from Alcatraz' Author Michael Esslinger has released a volume of correspondence from the inmates of Alcatraz Island. It's arguably the most infamous prison in the United States, and the new book includes letters from its most notorious inhabitants. The book is Letters from Alcatraz [Amazon; not on B&N] and is a complement to the author's earlier volume, a history of the prison. The author offers a sneak peek of the new collection on his website.