Top Books About Serial Killers

When journalist Maureen Callahan first heard about Israel Keyes in 2012, she was captivated by how a killer of this magnitude could go undetected by law enforcement for over a decade. And so began a project that consumed her for the next several years – uncovering the true story behind how the FBI ultimately caught Israel Keyes, and trying to understand what it means for a killer like Keyes to exist. A killer who left a path of monstrous, randomly committed crimes in his wake – many of which remain unsolved to this day.

It’s August 1946 — one year after the Japanese surrender — and women are turning up dead all over Tokyo. Detective Minami of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police goes on the hunt for a killer. But as he undertakes the case, Minami is haunted by his own memories of atrocities that he can no longer explain or forgive. Unblinking in its vision of a nation in a chaotic, hellish period in history, Tokyo Year Zero is a “brilliant, perplexing, claustrophobic … exhilarating” crime novel (The New York Times Book Review).

On July 15, 1997, Gianni Versace was shot and killed on the steps of his Miami Beach mansion by serial killer Andrew Cunanan. But months before Versace’s murder, award-winning journalist Maureen Orth was already investigating a major story on Cunanan for Vanity Fair. Culled from interviews with more than four hundred people and insights gleaned from thousands of pages of police reports, Vulgar Favors tells the complete story of Andrew Cunanan, his unwitting victims, and the moneyed world in which they lived . . . and died.

A classic California noir with a feminist twist, this prescient 1947 novel exposed misogyny in post-World War II American society, making it far ahead of its time.

Written by investigative journalist Steve Miller, Nobody’s Women tells the sordid tale of a Cleveland-based ex-marine and registered sex offender who butchered women and lived among their corpses. Miller also shares the stories of the murdered women — primarily prostitutes and junkies — and explains how their deaths were avenged.

Detectives Cara Elliott and Noah Deakin are on the case of a series of seemingly unconnected murders, each different in method, but each shocking and brutal. As the body count increases, they can’t ignore the details that echo famous cases of the past — Manson, Kemper, Dahmer, and more. As Elliott and Deakin get closer to unmasking the killer, the murders are moving closer to home.

If you prefer a scary story with a literary bent, now’s the time to read — or re-read — In Cold Blood. In this masterpiece of literary nonfiction, Truman Capote dives into the quadruple murder of a family in Holcomb, Kansas. He expresses the utter brutality of the murders while showing an unexpected empathy for the killers. It’s not a straightforward biography, but Capote’s careful research and one-on-one interviews tell the stories of two real-life men who committed an unthinkable crime.

An amateur detective races to solve a decades-old murder mystery in this “bloody and bizarre” Japanese crime novel with a twist hailed as “one of the most original” (Daily Mail).

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Stranger Beside Me comes a true crime story of a serial killer who was sentenced to die — yet lived to murder again … and again …

Lincoln Rhyme was once a brilliant criminologist, a genius in the field of forensics — until an accident left him physically and emotionally shattered. But now a diabolical killer is challenging Rhyme to a terrifying and ingenious duel of wits. With police detective Amelia Sachs by his side, Rhyme must follow a labyrinth of clues that reaches back to a dark chapter in New York City’s past — and reach further into the darkness of the mind of a madman who won’t stop until he has stripped life down to the bone.

An acclaimed bestseller and international sensation, Patrick Suskind’s classic novel provokes a terrifying examination of what happens when one man’s indulgence in his greatest passion — his sense of smell — leads to murder.

This New York Times bestseller intertwines the true tale of the 1893 World’s Fair and the cunning serial killer who used the fair to lure his victims to their death. Combining meticulous research with nail-biting storytelling, Erik Larson has crafted a narrative with all the wonder of newly discovered history and the thrills of the best fiction.

Perfect for fans of Making a Murderer and The People v. O. J. Simpson, Invisible Darkness is the story of one of the more bizarre cases in recent memory — killings so sensational that they prompted the Canadian government, in the interests of justice, to silence its national press and to lock foreign journalists out of the courts.