True Crime

Title: True Crime: Real-Life Stories of Abduction, Addiction, Obsession, Murder, Grave-robbing, and More
Editor: Lee Gutkind
Source: from publisher for review
Rating: ★★★☆☆
Review Summary: A generally insightful and well-written collection of true stories.

True Crime is a collection of true short stories, almost all of which are about a particular crime with one or two that are more philosophical thoughts on crime. Many of these stories are written by the people who lived them, although a few are instead written by journalists. As the slightly over-dramatic subtitle indicates, the content of these stories varies widely.

It’s Got Character

I really enjoyed the way The Man Who Loved Books Too Much was written.  The author’s style was very conversational and she did a nice job of blending descriptions of her own experience with those of her two “main characters” the book dealer/detective and the thief.  I really enjoyed her attempts to understand why so many people love and collect rare books, including dabbling in collecting herself.  As she concludes, a lot of people build an identity out of the books they collect.  For that reason, I very much enjoyed her descriptions of the collectors she met, the sort of books they collected and the the reasons for their collections.    The book was definitely less of a thriller or a mystery than I though it might be, but there were a few moments of tense anticipation and certainly lots of curiosity about what might happen next.  As Erik Larson said in his own review, it really was “the author’s cozy, quiet style” which kept me turning the pages on this one.  I felt like a friend was relating a story to me.

Doing the Two’s

Section two is a very meta section, containing only books about books.  I expected this section to be horribly dry to get through, with many books of books reviews and recommendations.  But I was pleasantly surprised to find many interesting books about the history of books and the value of reading.  In fact, I hadn’t looked very far before one book in particular caught my eye: The Man Who Loved Books Too Much: The True Story of a Thief, a Detective, and a World of Literary Obsession.  How fun!  A true story about a crime of passion – a passion for books.  I have high hopes for this one!