10 books like Mindhunter

This is the ultimate crime thriller. Yes, I know it is of the true crime genre, but there is no better crime thriller than In Cold Blood, as far as I am concerned. 

This book proves that true crime doesn’t have to read like it was lifted from the pages of your grandmother’s detective magazines. Nor does true crime have to be written like something from the Encyclopedia Britannica. 

Capote brings the characters to life—murderers, victims, and survivors. And even though you know how it will end, In Cold Blood reads like a thriller because that is just what it is.

This is an excellent reading about a former FBI agent not giving up on their search to find predators. I truly honor this agent for how he never gave up on the search. From my former experience as a Special Agent with The Drug Enforcement Administration, the writers did a thorough job to focus on how the FBI Agents unselfishly dedicated long investigative hours to target the predators of children. The writers described how the FBI agent’s moral beliefs and his dedication to helping the sexually abused children; perseverance, and creative innovative investigative techniques that enable him to find the predators.

This is a relatively new book, but not only does it take you through the case of serial killer Don Miller it explains how difficult it can be for the survivors to move on with their lives. In general, most people think that once the trial is over  that everyone can move on with their lives, but that’s not always the case. Killers like don Miller come up for parole, and that’s when the second part of the journey continues for these survivors. It becomes really hard to move forward with their lives when they have to relive the murders at every parole hearing until either the killer is released or dies.

As with physique photographs, I never associated murder with gay history, but newspapers were full of reports of it, often in coded and lewd language, as early as the 1920s. The cases were virtually identical. An older man meets a younger, attractive one and invites him home. In a fit of “homosexual panic” after the older man’s “indecent advance” toward him, the younger kills the older but, tried, is found innocent, given a light sentence, or paroled. Juries, judges, newspaper reporters, and the police engaged in and promoted such extreme homophobia. Indecent Advances helped me understand a principal excuse our society used in an attempt to cover up its hatred of gay men. 

David Grann “stumbled upon” this sordid mystery, in the process reviving forgotten crimes committed in the 1920s. Killers of the Flower Moon centers on lucrative oil rights pegged to reservation land out West owned by the Osage Indian tribe, whose members begin turning up dead under suspicious circumstances. Questions go unanswered for years until J. Edgar Hoover’s nascent FBI takes over the investigation.

The closing chapters are a coda of sorts about lingering racial injustice. Grann enters the narrative, but pulls it off without becoming a distraction. Killers of the Flower Moon is a compelling, important read and now would be a good time to dive in. The pandemic-delayed movie—directed by Martin Scorcese and starring Robert DiNiro and Leonardo DiCaprio—hits theaters this spring.

Donnie Brasco follows FBI agent Joseph D. Pistone’s six-year infiltration into the Mafia.

Posing as a street-level jewel thief, Pistone provides a bottoms-up look into the underbelly of the Brooklyn Bonanno’s in Brooklyn, from the family’s epicenter in pre-gentrified Williamsburg and Greenpoint. This rank-and-file rundown shines a harsh light on the petty lives of street soldiers and their conniving capos in their natural habitat, from scrounging for scraps in wood-paneled clubhouses to lording over their turf from pigeon-cooped rooftops.

In fact, the juxtaposition of setting, in flipping between sinister South Brooklyn and sizzling South Florida, is a masterful use of setting to set the tone. As Pistone goes native, becoming more and more Bonanno, we wonder what he sees in The Life led in these cramped apartments, velour-draped dives, and dingy clubhouses.

Locations of interest: The Motion Lounge nightclub on Graham Avenue in Williamsburg; Brooklyn Armory in Park Slope; The… show more.

Clint Hill’s legacy is his courageous action in the presidential motorcade during the JFK assassination. His career and mine overlapped. We address events occurring during the same era but from different perspectives. His as a Secret Service Agent on protective details and mine as an FBI Agent investigating criminal cases and personally assisting J. Edgar Hoover who worked under eight presidents and sixteen attorneys general. Hill had to be politically correct under all circumstances while I could get away with a blurred PC often to solve a criminal case. At times, our observance of historic events varied—but again we viewed them relative to our positions.

Police departments are comprised of, and are considered, the largest gangs in the country. They have developed a culture all its own. Within that culture are good cops and bad cops. I have personally encountered both while an FBI Agent and working cases of joint jurisdiction. Corruption within certain departments was so great during my tenure with the Bureau that we were ordered not to share information. That is why the author’s position as head of NYPD’s Internal Affairs Bureau for nearly two decades is incredible. It is a position where its chief is the most disliked cop in the entire department. Blue on Blue goes deep into the world of cops. Its content has provided a major portion of my Criminal Justice syllabus and teachings on “Leading Police Resilience.”

Schurman-Kauflin is not an armchair quarterback. She is the real deal. Schurman-Kauflin carefully gathered the facts she presents in this book. A skilled criminal profiler, she interviewed female serial killers (FSKs) herself, and she presented some of the clearest evidence I have ever encountered on FSKs’ backgrounds, crimes, and motives. Her work, although published a while ago, has withstood the test of time, as her findings have been replicated. In my own career, I have used her work as a source many times over.

Frederick Toates has been studying and writing about serial murder for many years. As a biological psychologist, he has authored many works about arousal and motivation. In this book, he and Olga Coschug-Toates, a fellow clinical scholar and noted author, present a biopsychosocial perspective of sexually motivated serial murders. They also highlight important concepts through case studies, making the presentation interesting and applicable. Although my recommended list revolves around elucidating the motives and means of FSKs, understanding how male serial killers commonly operate illustrates the stark differences between FSKs and MSKs.