Take a delightful dip into thrilling true crime stories


By Edward Hirst

Rowan Public Library

The appeal of historical true crime is not so difficult to imagine: vivid eras are brought to life in these accounts; they are usually well researched. Readers are offered the satisfaction of the compulsion to face the worst in human nature; the assurance that justice has been done, and the chance to empathize with the victims in their hours of need.

Erik Larson conveys what life was like in Chicago as the 19th century drew to a close in the book “The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America.” Chicago’s city leaders were out to prove to the nation and to the world that Chicago was up to the challenge of putting together a monumental World Exposition.

Larson goes into great detail to describe the effort put forth by numerous architects, builders and politicians. He also tells the darker story of H.H. Holmes, whose engaging charm seduced at least a score of unfortunate women, and the activity that took place at a building just a short distance away from the fair site.


“The Great Pearl Heist” is the story of an elaborate criminal scheme that unfolded over a period of several months in 1913 London. The pearls in question were part of a magnificent necklace that had been assembled over a long period by Max Mayer, one of the finest jewelers in London. It was a situation made for a heist, and one of the greatest criminals of the period, Joseph Grizzard, seized the opportunity to make it.


Fortunately for law and order, the London’s Scotland Yard and the underwriter who had insured the necklace for Lloyd’s of London were just as inventive and daring.


In “The Girls of Murder City: Fame, Lust, and the Beautiful Killers Who Inspired Chicago,” Douglas Perry writes about Maurine Watkins, a girl reporter with the Chicago Tribune in the 1920s, who was the first to cover the sensational story of two Jazz Age women who killed their men with the same casualness they gave to filing their nails. In this account, journalist Perry illuminates both the murderesses who held court at Cook County Jail and the newspaper writers who showcased them.

Paul French writes in the book “Midnight in Peking: How the Murder of a Young Englishwoman Haunted the Last Days of Old China” of a mutilated corpse that is found at the base of Fox Tower on Jan. 8, 1937, which poses a special problem for Peking police.


The victim was a free-spirited young woman named Pamela Werner. When Pamela wasn’t attending school in Tientsin, she lived in Peking with her adoptive father, Edward Werner, a scholar and former British consul. She had been beaten to death and then dumped at Fox Tower.


The British government increased its efforts to impede the investigation, suggesting that a cover-up, if not a full-blown conspiracy, was afoot. Racial bigotry also played a role in the British government’s insistence that the investigation should focus on Chinese rather than foreign residents.

Be sure to stop by Rowan Public Library for your chance to step back in time.