10 Gifts for the Person Who Loves True Crime

The Blood Says Otherwise

An absorbing true crime account of years at the frontline of crime scene reconstruction - from cold-blooded killings and gang wars to cold cases revived by a single clue. A compelling account of Ruben Miller's years working as a forensic scientist, visiting crime scenes and gathering evidence. His detailed descriptions of what he sees are often heart-breaking. The behaviour of the people he meets - lawyers, police, the media and even the occasional suspect - is always fascinating and occasionally hilarious. Insights into the techniques of forensic science give a fascinating view of what it can and can't do versus what the public, and even legal experts, expect. With unflinching honesty and flashes of dark humour, Ruben takes readers beyond the police tape to the questions that hang...

Underworld

From the author of the bestselling books about the escalation of organised crime and gangs in New Zealand. The brutal execution of an innocent man. The undercover DEA agent who fooled the Hells Angels in a 400kg cocaine plot. The brutal execution of a not-so-innocent man. The never-ending quest to bring down New Zealand's most wanted gangsters. These stories read like a crime novel—delving down into a parallel universe that many do not even know exists: The Underworld. Jared Savage's first book Gangland traced the evolution of the methamphetamine drug trade in New Zealand from the late 1990s to 2020. His second book, Gangster's Paradise, focused on stories about the escalation of organised crime: more drugs, more guns, more money. Underworld follows that pattern; but now the situation...

The Mushroom Tapes

The Mushroom Tapes brings together three renowned writers of true crime: Helen Garner, Chloe Hooper and Sarah Krasnostein. For this extraordinary book, the lone wolves became a team. Garner, Hooper and Krasnostein tracked Erin Patterson’s preliminary hearings and trial, joined the media scrum at the Latrobe Valley Law Courts, slept over in Morwell and spent countless hours in fervent discussion of the case and the themes it raises: love, hate, jealousy, revenge, marriage, money, mycology and murder. The Mushroom Tapes is a true crime book like no other, an unputdownable record of the writers’ private conversations about their impressions from inside the courtroom. They explore the gap between the certainties of the law and the messiness of reality, their own ambivalence about the true crime genre, and all that remains...

Polkinghorne

In Polkinghorne, literary journalist Steve Braunias takes readers on an extraordinary and often chilling journey through the most high-profile murder case in modern New Zealand history. With unparalleled access to the key players, Braunias offers readers his unique insight into the investigation, the trial, and the astonishing revelations that kept the New Zealand public utterly transfixed. The death of Pauline Hanna in her home in Remuera, and the arrest of her husband, eye surgeon Dr Philip Polkinghorne, led to an epic trial that played out like a scandalous exposé of rich Auckland life. Braunias pieces it all together and presents it as an unforgettable opera - including an extraordinary encounter that will leave readers stunned. Fascinating, engrossing, and filled with unforeseen turns, Polkinghorne goes deep inside the courtroom...

Nothing But the Truth

New Zealand's courtrooms have seen few figures as formidable—or as enduring—as Stuart Grieve KC. Over five decades of criminal law and trial advocacy, Stuart has had a front-row seat for the cases that have gripped the nation: the notorious Peter Plumley-Walker murder trials, the Springbok Tour clowns case, the Gisborne Cervical Cancer Inquiry, and the Erebus Royal Commission among them. He has prosecuted perpetrators of sexual assault and domestic violence, and acted as a special advocate for Ahmed Zaoui and Kim Dotcom. But the stories Stuart tells in Nothing But the Truth are bigger than any single verdict. Spanning decades of social and cultural change, this is as much a history of New Zealand as it is an analysis of the law: examining how our legal system has...

The Idaho Murders

Based on extensive research and first-hand interviews, this true crime novel offers unprecedented insight into the 2022 Idaho murders and the subsequent trial. On 13th November 2022, in the small quiet town of Moscow, Idaho, the unthinkable happened. Four innocent college students were murdered in their home. In the ensuing investigation, the local police and FBI did a lot right. But what did they get wrong? We've learned about the four heartbroken families - the Mogens, Goncalves, Kernodles, and Chapins. We have the backstory for Bryan Kohberger, brilliant graduate student, loner, apparent incel. Now, after over 300 exclusive interviews and in-depth reporting, James Patterson and prize-winning journalist Vicky Ward finally have some answers. PRAISE FOR JAMES PATTERSON 'Nobody does it better.' - Jeffery Deaver 'No one gets this...

Stuff the British Stole

An uproarious, illuminating trek through contested history, from the creator of the hit podcast and TV series. In the days of the British Empire, things were taken that probably shouldn't have been. So how come they're still in museums, galleries and some much stranger places? British museums are home to millions of fascinating objects. The trouble is, a whole bunch of them were stolen in wildly dodgy ways. A chance encounter with one of these items (a mechanical tiger/music box that mauls a soldier when you turn a handle) prompted journalist Marc Fennell to ask, 'What is that? And how the hell did it get here?' The answer was so gloriously weird that it sent Fennell on a globetrotting adventure, investigating the most audacious criminal enterprise in history...

Recipe for Murder

THE DEFINITIVE ACCOUNT OF ERIN PATTERSON AND THE MUSHROOM MURDERTRIAL THAT ENTHRALLED THE WORLD It is the case that has fascinated many.On 29 July 2023 in Leongatha, a small town in rural Victoria, family and friends of localwoman Erin Patterson sit down for Sunday lunch. On the menu, Beef Wellington.The next day, four of the guests are hospitalised. Doctors suspect death cap mushroompoisoning. Within a week, three of them will be dead.On 2 November that same year, Erin Patterson is arrested and charged with three countsof murder and five of attempted murder. Held in custody at Dame Phyllis Frost women'sprison until her trial began in April 2025, the case captured media attention around theworld.Did Patterson deliberately poison her estranged husband's parents, aunt and uncle?Was the lunch a recipe...

Filthy Rich

So shocking it wasn't originally published - available for the first time in the UK. Filthy Rich is the definitive account of how Jeffrey Epstein used money, power and privilege to abuse girls and evade justice for years. The book behind the headlines. The story the powerful hoped would disappear. Written by the world's bestselling storyteller James Patterson, this is the original and definitive account of how Epstein built his fortune, abused his power, and evaded justice for years - hiding in plain sight among the global elite. Drawing on original police interviews, court documents and victims' testimonies, the book traces the earliest investigations, Epstein's guilty plea and the shockingly lenient sentence that allowed his crimes to continue. Filthy Rich is also a chilling examination of how power...

Murderland

The Pacific Northwest is known for five things: lumber, aircraft, tech, coffee, and crime. Weyerhaeuser, Boeing, Microsoft and Amazon, Starbucks, and serial killers. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Caroline Fraser grew up in the shadow of Ted Bundy, the most notorious serial murderer of women in American history. Surrounded by his hunting grounds and mountain body dumps, in the brooding landscape of the Pacific Northwest, she witnessed a period when Bundy was just one perpetrator amid an uncanny explosion of serial rape and murder across the region. Why so many? Why so weirdly and nightmarishly gruesome? Why the senseless rise and then sudden fall of an epidemic of serial killing? As Murderland indelibly maps the lives and careers of Bundy and his infamous peers in mayhem — the Green River...