Murder, They Wrote
Investigate these accounts.

BY ANN RULE
Saturday, May 19, 2007 12:01 a.m.

1. "In Cold Blood" by Truman Capote (Random House, 1965).

Writing on true crime requires a capacity to deliver a kind of
psychological autopsy of both the dead and the deadly. Truman Capote's
"In Cold Blood," about the murder of a Kansas farm family in 1959,
superbly exemplifies that skill. In a classic true-crime story the
central question is not the how but the why--why did this happen? The
case must be complex, the characters--including the detectives and
prosecutors--unpredictable. Capote's mesmerizing book, which I read when
it was first published, was the inspiration that led me to try, on my
own, to get inside the mind of a murderer--which is how it happened that
I did my study, 15 years later, of Ted Bundy, poster boy of serial
killers. Despite latter-day criticism of Capote's ethics and technique,
he continues to be the author whose singular work represented a new way
of getting at the truth of so dark a crime.

2. "Blood and Money" by Thomas Thompson (Doubleday, 1976).

Thomas Thompson wrote about what may be the most compelling and complex
case in crime annals: the story of doomed Joan Robinson; her husband,
Dr. John Hill; and Joan's father, powerful old Ash Robinson, relentless
in his quest to avenge his daughter, who had been poisoned by an iclair
injected with bacteria. Thompson's uncanny skill at evoking a sense of
place still had the capacity to shock me years after I read "Blood and
Money." In a taxi in Houston, my neck prickled when I recognized a
neighborhood I'd never visited. When I asked the cabbie where we were,
he informed me that I was at "River Oaks"--the scene of the crime in
this remarkable work.

3. "Bitter Blood" by Jerry Bledsoe (Dutton, 1988).

Jerry Bledsoe's deft, engrossing take on arguably the most dysfunctional
family ever to inhabit the South ranks high on my favorites list. It has
everything any true-crime writer might lust after: sex, suspense and
wealthy, educated, slightly incestuous characters with upper-class
social standing. It also has five murders--a rich widow and her daughter
in Kentucky, and another rich widow, along with her son and
daughter-in-law in North Carolina--that are followed by four more deaths
before police, who discover a family connection to the killings, can
make an arrest. In the hands of another author, such an abundance of
material could have ended up unfathomable, but Bledsoe--who covered the
case as a reporter for the News-Record in Greensboro, N.C.--pulls it off
with admirable ilan.

4. "The Corpse Had a Familiar Face " by Edna Buchanan (Random House,
1987).

Pulitzer Prize-winner Edna Buchanan spent 15 years as a crime reporter
for the Miami Herald after going to work for the paper in 1970; this is
an intriguing memoir of her days and nights at crime scenes trying to
unravel the truth. Along the way she memorably evokes the witnesses,
families and cops that she encounters. Some of the crimes are comic--a
jilted octogenarian tosses a Molotov cocktail into his girlfriend's
house but is nabbed by police after she recognizes the label on the
container he used: his favorite brand of prune juice. Other crimes are
horrific and will haunt you for weeks. Buchanan, now a successful
mystery novelist, is one of a kind, both brazen and sentimental, and her
stories are captivating.

5. "The Wrong Man" by James Neff (Random House, 2001).

In 1954, an Ohio jury and much of America quickly accepted that Dr. Sam
Sheppard had killed his pregnant wife, Marilyn. James Neff, revisiting
the much-reported case almost 50 years later, presents another suspect
and a new view in "The Wrong Man." The book is rich in forensic detail,
and it taught me things I never knew, thanks to Neff's close attention
to the way blood had been sprayed and dripped at the crime scene. Blood
evidence didn't really come of age until the 1990s. That's why the
forensic data available at any 1954 crime scene are horse-and-buggy
stuff compared with what Neff had access to when he wrote on this
case--and he made the most of it. His research is monumental and a
shining example for any true-crime writer.

Ms. Rule is the best-selling author of two-dozen true-crime books,
including "The Stranger Beside Me: Ted Bundy." Her latest, "Too Late to
Say Goodbye: A True Story of Murder and Betrayal," will be published by
Free Press in June.