This true crime book tells the bizarre story of a man found dead in a chest freezer — and how it later emerged that the victim had himself committed murder.
Gangs, Bombs and Kingpins is a 2017 true crime book by veteran crime journalists Mogens Lauridsen and Preben Lund. It examines the most significant gang cases that have shaken Denmark over the years.
Per Strarup Søndergaard's book on Edderkopsagen tells the story of the sprawling fraud case that rocked Danish society in the 1970s with a million-krone scandal without precedent.
Knud Simonsen's true crime book investigates the murder of Marie Lock-Hansen, a case that has fascinated and shocked the public.
Denmark has developed specialized resources to address stalking cases, including dedicated centers and documented accounts of obsessive behavior. Recent cases and podcasts have brought attention to the prevalence of stalking in the Nordic country.
A new book by Danish author Peer Kaae draws on original police archives to document ten murder cases investigated by Rejseholdet between 1927 and 1948, including the wartime killing of celebrated poet-priest Kaj Munk and previously unreleased details about how Danish detectives solved one of the nation's most cynical crimes.
The Good Nurse: America's Most Prolific Serial Killer, the Hospitals that Allowed Him to Thrive, and the Detectives Who Brought Him to Justice (Unknown, 2013) — covers the case of Charles Cullen.
Jana van der Merwe examines a brutal murder in Welkom, a small Free State mining town in South Africa, following the police investigation and ensuing trial in detail. The book explores how a violent killing exposed deep personal betrayals and the workings of justice, and community complicity, in a close-knit former gold-mining community.
Massie's sequel to Nicholas and Alexandra investigates the 1918 execution of Russia's imperial family and the seventy-year mystery of their remains. He traces the forensic and DNA detective work that finally identified the Romanov bones after the Soviet collapse, alongside the impostors and disputes surrounding the last tsar's fate.
Stephen L. Carter recovers his grandmother Eunice Carter, a pioneering Black attorney whose strategic work was instrumental in the 1936 prosecution and conviction of organised-crime boss Lucky Luciano. The biography reclaims a largely erased figure who simultaneously dismantled racial and gender barriers while playing a decisive role in a landmark American law enforcement case.
T. J. English chronicles the Cuban-American Mafia organisation known informally as 'the Corporation,' built by Jose Miguel Battle Sr. from illegal bolita gambling operations in Miami and New York from the 1960s onward. The book traces the organisation's expansion into murder, drug trafficking and political corruption across decades of American organised crime history.
Robert Fieseler recovers the June 1973 arson at New Orleans' UpStairs Lounge, a gay bar where thirty-two people died in a long-ignored atrocity. The book restores the victims' identities, names the probable arsonist and situates this devastating, under-prosecuted fire within the broader history of LGBTQ struggle and the fight for recognition.
Melissa del Bosque investigates how the Zetas cartel laundered tens of millions in narco profits through American quarter-horse racing in Texas and New Mexico, reaching the industry's highest levels. The book reveals organised crime's remarkable reach into an iconic American sporting world and the FBI investigation that ultimately dismantled the scheme.
Michael Finkel tells of Christopher Knight, who walked into the Maine woods in 1986 and lived in total isolation for twenty-seven years, surviving by burglarising nearby seasonal cabins at night. The book explores radical solitude, the ethics of withdrawal from society and a man whose extraordinary self-imposed isolation was sustained by hundreds of petty crimes.
Maggie Nelson confronts the 2005 trial of Gary Leiterman, identified by DNA evidence decades after the 1969 strangling murder of her aunt Jane Mixer in Michigan. The lyrical, formally inventive memoir reckons with inherited grief, the mythology that builds around unsolved family violence and the strange, disorienting experience of a cold case suddenly and violently reopened.
Beverly Lowry investigates the December 1991 murders of four teenage girls at an Austin, Texas, yogurt shop, a case marred by contaminated evidence, contested confessions extracted under pressure and ultimately overturned convictions. The book follows the unsolved tragedy across more than two decades, examining its lasting wounds on the victims' families and a community still awaiting justice.
Kevin Cook reexamines the March 1964 murder of Kitty Genovese in Kew Gardens, Queens, long cited in social psychology textbooks as the canonical proof of bystander apathy following press reports of thirty-eight witnesses failing to intervene. The book carefully dismantles a myth built on distorted journalism, restoring the victim's full humanity and correcting a profoundly misleading cultural narrative.
Bill James and Rachel McCarthy James argue, through systematic statistical analysis and deep archival research, that a single travelling axe murderer was responsible for dozens of family killings across America between 1898 and 1912, including the famous Villisca, Iowa, murders. The book applies sabermetric rigour to cold-case history, connecting long-overlooked crimes through weapon, timing and victim patterns.
Journalist Claudia Rowe recounts her unsettling multi-year correspondence with Kendall Francois, a serial killer who murdered eight women in Poughkeepsie, New York, between 1996 and 1998 while keeping their bodies in his family home. The book interrogates her own complex fascination with violent criminals and the uneasy, ethically charged relationship between a reporter and a murderer.
Skip Hollandsworth reconstructs the 1884-1885 murders attributed to Austin's 'Servant Girl Annihilator,' a series of axe attacks representing a possible first documented American serial killer, predating Jack the Ripper. The book recreates a frontier city paralysed by fear and an entirely unsuccessful investigation that never identified a perpetrator.
Harold Schechter recounts Ed Gein, the Wisconsin farmhand whose 1957 arrest revealed years of grave-robbing and the manufacture of household items from human remains, alongside at least two murders. The book documents the disturbing reality behind a case whose cultural impact directly inspired the creation of Norman Bates, Leatherface and Hannibal Lecter.
FBI profiler John E. Douglas applies the tools of criminal behavioural analysis to history's most stubbornly baffling unsolved crimes, from Jack the Ripper and the Lindbergh kidnapping to the murder of JonBenet Ramsey. The book offers methodical investigative frameworks and fresh evidence-based perspectives on cases that have resisted resolution and continued to captivate the public imagination.
Douglas Preston and Mario Spezi investigate the 'Monster of Florence,' an unidentified serial killer who murdered sixteen people, all couples parked in the Tuscan countryside, over a period stretching from 1968 to 1985. The book recounts the long-unsolved case, multiple wrongful prosecutions and the authors' own alarming entanglement with overzealous Italian prosecutors during their investigation.
Erich Kuby's 1958 documentary book investigates the murder of German high-class escort Rosemarie Nitribitt, found strangled in her Frankfurt apartment in 1957.
J. Reuben Appelman's personal investigation into the Oakland County Child Killer cases from 1970s Michigan, where four children were kidnapped and murdered.
A Swedish audio series is drawing international attention to historical Scandinavian crimes, including unexplained deaths within courthouse walls. But questions about victim sensitivity and journalistic methods have tempered its breakthrough success.
Swedish crime writer Sara Strömberg released Brændemærket in January 2026 as the third standalone novel in her Vera Bergström series. The story follows journalist Vera as she reopens a decades-old murder case from Storlien, Sweden.
A new book on police operations and the pursuit of criminals sheds light on the complex gray zones that define investigative work, covering topics such as art theft, unsolved cases, and hijacking.
