“As long as individual men and women have the power and agency to exercise free will and choice, evil will continue to exist, and it must be challenged and fought.”
One glance at the average Netflix (other streaming services are available) will show you that true crime is a really, really popular genre with people. And the same is very much the case with the world of reading. Books based on everything from dodgy accounting to vicious serial killers continue to capture the imagination of readers around the world, chiefly due to the fact that all of the heroes, villains and scenes playing out across the pages actually happened. With the genre set to continue going on strong, check out the 10 best true crime books from 2022.
Trailed: One Woman’s Quest To Solve the Shenandoah Murders – Kathryn Miles
In May 1996, Julie Williams and Lollie Winans were murdered while backpacking on the heels of the famous Appalachian Trail. The two women had fallen in love but, despite investigations from National Park Experts, Virginia Police and even the FBI, the case remained unsolved for years.
Kathryn Miles was a journalist and professor at Lollie Winans’ college in Maine and, twenty years on from the murder, began investigating the lives of the two women, their deaths and the attempted prosecution of the chief suspect, Darrell David Rice. Trailed is the stunning story of how Miles uncovers vital documentation and earns the trust of key players in the case to expose cover-ups, corruption and sloppiness in the field.
The Missing Cryptoqueen – Jamie Bartlett
In 2014, Oxford graduate Dr Ruja Ignatova conjured up a lie that would spread across hundreds of countries and cost billions of dollars. Self-styled as The CryptoQueen, Ignatova promised that she would revolutionise the finance world with the brand new cryptocurrency OneCoin aka. ‘The Bitcoin Killer’.
And over the next few years, the OneCoin craze would claim millions of investors, making it one of the fastest companies to make $1 billion in revenue. But, as quickly as she had appeared, Ignatova vanished off the face of the Earth, confirming all was not as it seemed with OneCoin. Jamie Bartlett takes readers on an intriguing deep-dive across this scarcely-believable story in The Missing Cryptoqueen, explaining how Ignatova pulled the wool over the world’s eyes with one of the biggest scams ever seen.
Slenderman: Online Obsession, Mental Illness, and the Violent Crime of Two Midwestern Girls – Kathleen Hale
The Slenderman stabbings were a crime that shook a small Milwaukee community to its core. Two twelve-year-old girls stabbed a schoolmate of theirs, apparently under the influence of the spooky internet phenomenon, Slenderman.
Utilising court transcripts, police documents and extensive interviews, Kathleen Hale’s Slenderman: Online Obsession is one of the best 2022 true crime books and acts as an intense look at how mental illness and chilling online communities helped to create a crime plucked straight out of the pages of a thriller novel.
When A Killer Calls – John E. Douglas And Mark Olshaker
John Douglas is a New York Times bestselling author, the trailblazing FBI criminal profiler and the influence behind the acclaimed Netflix show, Mindhunter. With Mark Olshaker, When A Killer Calls is Douglas’ chilling tale of his pursuit of Larry Gene Bell, one of the most sadistic serial killers in American history.
Douglas details how criminal profiling was pushed to its limits in an effort to understand the behaviours of this killer, and how they could be utilised for one of the most emotionally fraught criminal confrontations ever. As well standing as one of the best examples of the evolution of profiling, When A Killer Calls explores the importance of cutting-edge forensics, as well as the bravery shown by those whose lives are affected by the monsters in society.
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Scoundrel – Sarah Weinman
In March 1957, the body of fifteen-year-old Victoria Ann Zielinski was found in a sand pit in Ramsey, New Jersey. The killer was identified as Edgar Smith, a 23-year-old who was sentenced to death due to the heinous nature of the crime. However, whilst behind bars, conservative commentator William F. Buckley began corresponding with Smith and was gradually manipulated into believing Smith was in fact innocent.
Author of The Real Lolita and editor of Unspeakable Acts Sarah Weinman takes readers on the extraordinary journey of how one man conned the justice system into setting him free. Deep diving into the manipulation tactics and how Smith was able to make a mockery of well-meaning and otherwise smart people, whilst also paying homage to his victims who were denied justice for years.
Hell’s Half-Acre: The Untold Story of the Benders, America’s First Serial Killer Family – Susan Jonusas
Susan Jonusas’s Hell’s Half-Acre is the gripping tale of how one family shook the young American nation to its very core. In the aftermath of the bloody American Civil War, the citizens of Labette County, Kansas came across a mass grave lined with countless bodies in what was described as a ‘human slaughterhouse’.
Utilising archival material from the day, Jonusas takes readers into the heart of the grizzly crimes committed by the Benders, the four members credited as America’s first serial killer family. From how the war-torn environment of the country allowed these bloodthirsty killers to blossom to how hapless detectives ensured the Benders would evade justice to this day, Hell’s Half-Acre is one of the best 2022 true crime books that feels more akin to a thrilling work of fiction.
Hunting Ghislaine – John Sweeney
Acclaimed investigative journalist John Sweeney lifts the shadows on one of the most high-profile and shocking criminal stories in modern times with one of 2022’s best true crime books, Hunting Ghislaine.
In the book, Sweeney explores how Ghislaine’s monstrous nature was formed way before her marriage to Jeffrey Epstein. Maxwell’s father was a sadist, war criminal and domineering figure, eventually leading her to a life of service in two of the world’s biggest monsters. Utilising the widest array of sources ever amassed on the socialite, the author masterfully illustrates the ‘fairytale in reverse’ storyline that followed Maxwell over the course of her life.
Blood & Ink – Joe Pompeo
On September 16, 1922, the bodies of Reverend Edward Hall and his secret mistress Eleanor Mills were discovered underneath a crabapple tree on an abandoned farm in New Brunswick, New Jersey. The pair had been positioned in a way that was meant to resemble intimacy, and what followed was one of the most published and talked-about crimes in American history, catapulting true crime into the forefront of people’s minds.
A century on, Vanity Fair associate Joe Pompeo whisks readers back to when this double murder was centre stage in every newspaper across the US. From how the authorities bumbled their way to no arrests to the efforts of one headline-hunting journalist who finally nailed a trial, it is a classic tale of love, money, murder and how grizzly crimes made their way to the front pages.
Jimmy The King: Murder, Vice, And The Reign Of A Dirty Cop – Gus Garcia-Roberts
Spanning four decades, Jimmy The King is the true crime book from Gus Garcia-Roberts detailing how one corrupt cop took over one of the largest forces in the United States, and how it all came crumbling down.
Following the killing of a thirteen-year-old in Suffolk County, Jimmy Burke was rewarded with a job with the police following his convenient account of events helping to close the case. What followed for Burke was a glittering career of climbing to the top of one of the country’s largest police departments, all on the back of corruption, political leverage and gangster-level violence.
Jimmy The King is the ultimate go-to for those true crime enthusiasts looking for a title that delves into the motives of modern policing, who it truly protects and who it is permanently targeting.
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American Cartel: Inside the Battle To Bring Down The Opioid Industry – Sari Horwitz And Scott Higham
Sari Horwitz and Scott Higham’s American Cartel follows a small group of DEA agents led by tough-talking New Yorker Joseph Rannazzisi and their efforts to curtail the greatest man-made epidemic in American history: Opioids.
This true crime novel explores the hurdles these agents and lawyers had to scale in holding the drug industry to account against a backdrop of a scarcely-believable death toll. Political cowardice, corporate greed and the most complex civil litigation faced by Rannazzisi, and American Cartel is one of the best 2022 true crime books and does a wonderful job in illustrating how some of them would find their careers in tatters at the hands of the institutes sworn in to uphold the law.
Part-time reader, part-time rambler, and full-time Horror enthusiast, James has been writing for What We Reading since 2022. His earliest reading memories involved Historical Fiction, Fantasy and Horror tales, which he has continued to take with him to this day. James’ favourite books include The Last (Hanna Jameson), The Troop (Nick Cutter) and Chasing The Boogeyman (Richard Chizmar).
