The best investigative journalism books

I read this book ages ago, but it is an excellent example of the type of book I write—a humorous mystery. Fletcher is an investigative reporter working undercover on the beach and assigned to write about the trafficking of illegal drugs. Instead, he's approached by a wealthy man making him an offer he can't refuse. However, he soon finds out that all is not as it seems. 

This book is about the 2002 Gujarat riots in India and the coverup. It reads like a real-life thriller as you learn about the murder of the state’s Home Minister, the complicity of the state and its officials in the massacre, and how those who went along with the cover-up were rewarded. This book inspires me with the courage and conviction of the author-activist Rana Ayyub, who dares to speak up and continues to do so!

It will surprise and upset you that the politicians who are said to be complicit in the horrendous rapes, murders, and rioting have ascended to the national level of governance in India. When the author played tapes from her undercover investigation of Gujarat at a university of Chicago event, “everybody was stunned, numb, and there was just silence in the room.” 

If The Boys from Brazil had never been published (a very sad thought, indeed), The Odessa File would occupy the mantle of my favorite book.

As it stands, however, Frederick Forsyth’s third novel—which was released only a year after Day of the Jackal—must content itself with second place.

With all of that said, I don’t think the Morris Baker Universe would exist without the influence of this thrilling tale about a secret network of Nazi war criminals that not only shields its members from the retribution of war crimes tribunals, but also attempts to alter world events… especially where the Jews are concerned.

Speaking of witch hunts… oh wait, #MeToo was most definitely not a witch hunt when it came to exposing the predatory behavior of one Harvey Weinstein. This non-fiction book probably needs no introduction: it’s written by the Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times journalists who finally broke the story of the century. It is a must-read in terms of understanding how one man’s power enabled him to get away with assaulting and terrorizing women for so long. Megan and Jodi’s final confrontation with Weinstein himself is chilling. And if you think the story ends there, a powerful coda centers on Christine Blasey Ford and her decision to speak up against the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh. This book’s humane, empathetic account offers a small modicum of justice in the wake of all the pain, destruction, and trauma caused by a perpetrator like Weinstein. 

I know, I know...non-fiction. But as far as I’m concerned, definitely still a thriller, and to this day, the quintessential political scandal. There are so many iconic facets to the story: the anonymous whistleblower Deep Throat’s invocation to follow the money; Woodward and Bernstein’s dogged refusal to drop the story, even when all appeared to be lost; the slow burn of revelation upon revelation.

This wasn’t about car chases and guns. It was about paper trails and getting sources on the record. 

The bravery of that never left me, and was always in my mind while writing my book.

The Rachel Porter Mysteries by Jessica Speart are not well known, but they deserve to be. These books are available now only as Kindle ebooks and used mass-market paperbacks. Based on years of experience as an investigative journalist focusing on wildlife law enforcement and endangered species issues, the author created protagonist Rachel Porter, a new wildlife agent who is determined to protect animals wherever she is assigned, no matter what dangers and challenges may erupt from the environment, the local citizens, or her own bosses, who typically believe that she doesn’t belong in the field. Speart writes amazing scenes that are both suspenseful and funny, a trick that as an author I envy. I learned a lot about the illegal wildlife trade in each book, and I never tired of the quirky characters and Rachel’s fearless dedication to protecting wildlife at all costs. 

Thriller writer and contemporary ‘queen of crime’ Val McDermid draws deeply on her own years as a tabloid journalist to bring fictional reporter Allie Burns to life during the winter of discontent. This unputdownable tale of a newspaper investigation into matters of life, death, and corruption is so evocative of a 1970s Glasgow newsroom that I could practically smell the fags and taste the whisky. More Allie Burns stories are promised, and I for one can’t wait.

Bly was a brilliant investigative journalist best known in the United States for her exposé of the Women’s Lunatic Asylum based on her feigning of insanity as an undercover patient … until she became even more famous for her circumnavigation of the globe, inspired by Jules Verne’s fictional Around the World in 80 Days. Sponsored and encouraged by Joseph Pulitzer (editor of the tabloid newspaper, The New York World) and written in a witty, breezy style, Bly’s pithily-told tale upends every stereotype of fragile Victorian womanhood; her gutsy candor about her madcap race around what was supposed to be a wholly man’s world still stuns and delights!

I love a book where neither the reader nor the protagonist knows what’s real and what is not. Night Film reads like a nightmarish fairytale. Scott Mcgrath, the investigative journalist at the center of the novel, brings you along on a journey that is as much about his inner demons as it is about the mystery he is hoping to solve.

I love a damaged protagonist. Maybe because I have experienced significant trauma in my life, I easily relate to those faking sanity despite the chaos in their brains. The last couple of chapters are my favorites. If this book is a symphony the final chapters are the crescendo that gets your heart pumping. 

There is also a connection to my native Chile, which surprised me and filled me with nostalgia.

I loved the main character Paddy Meehan’s voice in this series. Paddy is a lowly copygirl at a Glasgow newspaper with dreams of becoming an investigative journalist during a time when girls are expected to marry out of high school and have babies, not unlike the way things were when I entered the work world. Paddy is intelligent and driven and so outside the mold that her family and boyfriend, indeed the Scottish community, cannot understand her drive to be more than what society demands she should be. She’s someone I rooted for every step of the way as she navigates the old boys’ club in the 1980s and 1990s. Combine Paddy with Mina’s brilliant writing, realistic dialogue, and compelling plotlines, and this series is one to be savored. 

Convicted murderer Jeffrey MacDonald sues Joe McGinniss, who wrote a best-selling book about MacDonald’s 1970 trial for brutally killing his family.

Author Janet Malcolm asks, How is the journalist like the murderer? When are they lying to each other and when do they conspire to deceive the world? Malcolm had me from the get-go (despite the unfortunate sexism of the book’s first sentence): “Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible.”

Malcolm’s unflinching examination of sociopathy and masquerade proved an indispensable guide through the true crime space. And, as one summary said, The Journalist and the Murderer has “particular appeal for those who cherish the odd, the off-center, and the unsolved.”

This is an adventure! Turn the pages of this book to find waves and many kinds of waves: rogue, freak, and giant waves of the ocean and the people who try to surf them. I am a retired US Coast Guard officer and sailed many ships at sea. As a mariner we know of or have seen waves, some of them tossing our ships in the middle of the night as we try to sail home. Any number of ships have vanished in the ocean, quickly, with no time to put out an SOS call for help. This is a great book to learn more while having an adventure reading it from the safety of your chair.

Former investigative reporter Rick Atwood is the go-to guy for the chief of police whenever crime strikes Seaside Cove, but Rick’s precocious eleven-year-old daughter is the real star of this series. Alex is a Nancy Drew for the 21st century. Her diary entries put a smile on my face as they brought back memories of my own childhood. Her upstaging of the adults in her life made me chuckle throughout the book. Terry Ambrose is a true master at capturing what it’s like to be a young girl yearning to be taken seriously by the adults in her life, a difficult task for any author but even more so for a male author.

This book, in many ways, is the spiritual grandfather to mine. Christopher Leonard is a pioneer: He went to a level of detail that no one had before. His deep investigation of Tyson Foods is a formative example of how corporations pick profits over their farmers and use their power to exert control over producers, workers, and suppliers. It has informed my research time and time again. 

In the year of her tenth reunion, journalist Alexandra Robbins returns to her former high-pressure public high school in Bethesda, MD. For the next year, she follows eight intelligent, motivated, and overachieving high school students through their daily lives. The author presents a host of complicated issues plaguing high-achieving suburban high schools including intense stress amongst students in AP courses, an epidemic of cheating, parental pressures to perform, unprescribed ADD drug use, and a cutthroat college admissions process. Although this is a nonfiction book scaffolded by investigative journalism, it reads like a novel. Robbins presents a clear warning to students as they navigate the pressures of achieving at peak levels and to parents about how serious the “Ivy-league obsession” is in American culture.

This book characterizes the discovery and spread HIV and AIDS. Shits an investigative journalist provides an extensive look into the disease itself, the politics and politicians battling to control or ignoring the disease. Also discussed are the events that shaped the pandemic leading to its expansion or its control. 

The late, great James Herbert is still, in my opinion, incomparable in the genre of British horror. I devoured most of his books as a teen, but stumbled on Shrine only a few years ago. This, and so relevant today, is a study on mass hysteria—a frightening enough concept—but it isn’t that which lingered. For me it was one particular scene. The story centres around a church, and the protagonist, an investigative journalist, decides to look into how the entire village became a shrine to what was basically a vision. This leads him to a small privately owned ancestral estate, and it is here, in this small dark church with high wooden pews, where the bone-chilling encounter takes place. I have to say I’ve never read a more visual description of encroaching dread than this. Brilliantly executed. Second to none.       

This is the classic, the moment at which the industrialization of death—like so much else in our lives—was made visible. And it was the start of a social movement to reclaim death as part of our social, interconnected lives. Mitford focused on the funeral industry, and how it turned death into a commodity – ‘ashes’ isn’t a good word because people would scatter them, but call them ‘human remains’ and you can charge to put them somewhere. Death often makes people feel remorse, even guilt – ah! That can be ‘satisfied’ by the purchase of a fine funeral. 

Mitford closed the book with a call for a social movement: “Whether the narrow passageway to the unknown, which everybody must cross, will continue to be as cluttered and expensive to traverse as it is today, depends in the last analysis entirely on those travelers who have not yet reached it.” (p228)… show more.

Katherine Ellison is a Pulitzer Prize winning investigative reporter. When she and her pre-teen son were both diagnosed with ADHD in the same year it became her personal and professional mission to find out as much as she could about this increasingly common diagnosis. Anyone who knows and loves someone who’s been diagnosed with ADHD would do well to read this book as a guide through the often bewildering landscape of ADHD treatments. As serious and personal as Buzz is, Ellison is a great writer and her memoir is equal parts science, expert interviews and analysis, parenting angst, and humor.

Ian Cobain is an exceptional British investigative journalist and was on the staff of The Guardian and is now with Middle East Eye. This book is broader than the Cold War but is a brilliant analysis of how the state uses secrecy to hide the truth of how the public is governed. He has done some groundbreaking work on how Foreign Office’s Information Research Department methods have been incorporated into modern anti-terrorism techniques.