Harold Schechter is a true crime author specializing in the dark psychology of serial killers. His works delve into the depths of human depravity, meticulously reconstructing notorious cases with a captivating narrative. Schechter's distinctive approach blends rigorous research with a compelling storytelling style, drawing readers into complex criminal histories. Beyond his acclaimed true crime narratives, he also crafts engaging fiction, reimagining historical figures within thrilling mystery series.
Exploring the controversial legacy of Dr. Fredric Wertham, this work delves into his impact on pop culture and the comic book industry. Known for his critical stance on comics, Wertham's views sparked significant debate about censorship and artistic freedom. The book combines insightful analysis with the unique storytelling style of its award-winning creators, offering a thought-provoking look at the intersection of media, morality, and societal values during his time.
A Civil War veteran who perpetrated one of the most ghastly mass slaughters in the annals of U.S. crime. A nineteenth-century female serial killer whose victims included three husbands and six of her own children. A Gilded Age "Bluebeard" who did away with as many as fifty wives throughout the country. A decorated World War I hero who orchestrated a murder that stunned Jazz Age America. A quartet of gripping historical true-crime narratives, Butcher's Work restores these once-notorious cases to vivid, dramatic life.
Relates how respected local farmer and school board treasurer Andrew P. Kehoe blew up the new primary school in Bath, Michigan in 1927, an act of vengeance that killed thirty-eight children and six adults in one of the first and worst mass murders in American history.
Bestselling true-crime master Harold Schechter explores the real-life headline-making psychos, serial murderers, thrill-hungry couples, and lady-killers who inspired a century of classic films. The necktie murders in Alfred Hitchcock's Frenzy; Chicago's Jazz Age crime of passion; the fatal hookup in Looking for Mr. Goodbar; the high school horrors committed by the costumed slasher in Scream. These and other cinematic crimes have become part of pop-culture history. And each found inspiration in true events that provided the raw material for our greatest blockbusters, indie art films, black comedies, Hollywood classics, and grindhouse horrors. So what's the reality behind Psycho, Badlands, The Hills Have Eyes, A Place in the Sun, Arsenic and Old Lace, and Dirty Harry? How did such tabloid-ready killers as Bonnie and Clyde, body snatchers Burke and Hare, Texas sniper Charles Whitman Jr., nurse-slayer Richard Speck, and Leopold and Loeb exert their power on the public imagination and become the stuff of movie lore? In this collection of revelatory essays, true-crime historian Harold Schechter takes a fascinating trip down the crossroads of fact and fiction to reveal the sensational real-life stories that are more shocking, taboo, and fantastic than even the most imaginative screenwriter can dream up.
Chronicles the pursuit and trial of Alfred Packer, one of a crew of prospectors who, when his group became lost in the snow of the Rockies in 1873, turned to cannibalism.
An unputdownable true crime story set in the pulp-fiction obsessed world of 1930s America. On Easter Sunday 1937, Bob Irwin – a handsome, failing sculptor with a history of depression and psychopathic episodes – commited a grisly triple murder. Creeping back to the flat of his ex-landlady in a swish New York borough, Irwin killed her, her lodger, and her stunning daughter Ronnie with an ice-pick, an apparently motiveless homicide that would shock the entire country. Crafted like a Chandler novel, THE MAD SCULPTOR thrillingly relates Irwin's crime, flight, and capture, his trial and its aftermath, whilst painting a vivid portrait of 1930s America.
Killer Verse: Poems of Murder and Mayhem is a spine-tingling collection of terrifically creepy poems about the deadly art of murder. The villains and victims who populate these pages range from Cain and Abel and Bluebeard and his wives to Lizzie Borden, Jack the Ripper, and Mafia hit men. The literary forms they inhabit are just as varied, from the colorful melodramas of old Scottish ballads to the hard-boiled poetry of twentieth-century noir, from lighthearted comic riffs to profound poetic musings on murder. Robert Browning, Thomas Hardy, W. H. Auden, Stevie Smith, Mark Doty, Frank Bidart, Toi Derricotte, Lynn Emanuel, and Cornelius Eady are only a few of the many poets, old and new, whose work is captured in this heart-stopping—and criminally entertaining—collection.
