I don’t care for true crime. I question some of the drive behind its popularity–it’s got a lot of dead girls and it positions human pain as entertainment–but I also understand why people are drawn to it. The genre has been around for a long time, and it ebbs and wanes in its connection with popular culture. Some works of true crime endure, like In Cold Blood by Truman Capote or Vincent Bugliosi and Curt Gentry’s Helter Skelter, and others are but a flash in the pan. Entire careers have been built in the world of true crime, including staples like Ann Rule.

When I say I don’t care for true crime, I tell a bit of a lie. I have actually read quite a bit of it, and I have enjoyed the books I’ve read. John Krakauer’s Missoula kept me hooked, as did both Columbine and Parkland by David Cullen. Michelle McNamera’s I’ll Be Gone In The Dark was impossible for me to put down, as was Dashka Slater’s incredible YA true crime book The 57 Bus. Here’s where I won’t lie: In Cold Blood is also one of my favorite stories and one I can read stories about and stories derived from again and again. What captures me with true crime isn’t the crime. It’s the way the crime story is told. I want to feel like I’m reading a work of hard journalism, and that tends to lean toward the types of true crime books where there is not a dead body or series of dead bodies. Sometimes there are, of course. But for the most part, I prefer my true crime to have a low body count.

For years, I’ve called this subset of the genre “bloodless” true crime, but that feels a bit disingenuous,. There is always going to be some kind of blood with true crime, whether it’s literal or metaphorical. Calling this micro genre non-violent true crime also feels a little inaccurate: there is hurt along the way and in some cases, it can be violent. I think the better description for the kind of true crime books I like are those of unique obsession. These are stories where the criminal is not hungry for another person but driven to crime related to more material objects. Books in this niche can easily blend in with narrative nonfiction that explores science or art; you might see them recommended with books about, say, bats or owls. But these books do more than offer stories of creatures or objects. There is a crime of some sort at the center of the story, often focused on one or two individuals and exploration of a subculture where said individual is active and engaged. A book like The Language of Butterflies, while good, does not quite fit because it does not focus on the a specific crime related to lepidopteristry.

These books tend to be very white, and they also tend to be very male. This makes perfect sense: white collar crime is more digestible to us as humans, and we find white men to be most digestible in Western cultures (whether or not you believe that or I believe that is another story). Men are authorities and experts, and the crimes of obsession which center them can avoid diving into politics of the other, be it in race, gender, sexuality.

If you, like me, love a good true crime book that focuses less on human destruction and more on obsession, then you’ll want to try some of these books. It is not lost on me that most of these books have the word “thief” in the title.

The Art Thief: A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession by Michael Finkel

I think part of why I am drawn to bloodless crime stories is because of my own (minor) connection to one. During my time at the University of Texas in the graduate Information Studies program, I had an opportunity to help with a research project. The project would result in a manual to help special libraries and archives across the country develop securities policies to protect their collections. This manual was long overdue and it was necessary, thanks to the nationwide crime spree of Stephen Blumburg. Blumberg was an obsessive about books–a literal, not figurative, bibliomaniac–and he stole books, manuscripts, and other significant materials from institutions across the US. You can read the Blumberg story here, and my (tiny) role in the project was helping tabulate the results of an institutional survey about the materials stolen by the book thief.*

When I read the flap copy for The Art Thief, I knew immediately it was a book I needed to read. I grabbed it on audio, and I was not disappointed. The story follows Stéphane Breitwieser, one of the most successful art thieves in modern history. Breitwieser stole hundreds of priceless works of art and artifacts from museums and cathedrals in Switzerland, France, and more over the course of eight years. He lived with his long-time girlfriend in the attic of an apartment building owned by his mother, about the most unassuming setup for such an art connoisseur. And connoisseur he was: Breitwieser was obsessive about the works he took, both in understanding their stories and in figuring out how to carefully remove them from where they belong.

The book is a fascinating look at obsession, as much as it is a book that questions motives. Breitwieser, like Blumberg, did not steal in order to make a profit. He did it because he was obsessive about art and those works in particular. Did he have stendhal syndrome? Did he struggle with kleptomania? Was it some other third thing? There’s ample time in the book dedicated to what the purpose of museums is and the struggles to develop security systems that allow public access while protecting culturally-significant valuables (not to mention the costs associated with security).

It’s hard to know or say. What we do know, though, comes through this book. Finkel’s storytelling is captivating, and his author’s note is a must-read at the end. The work is pieced together from actual interviews with Breitwieser and Breitwieser’s own writings about the crimes. The author’s note also references Blumberg and several other art criminals through history, perfect for readers who want to dedicate days of their life to internet rabbit holes. This is a short read, and the audiobook, performed by Eduardo Ballerini, an excellent option.

This story, like Blumberg’s, is not ancient history. Both men are still alive, their crimes done in the late 1990s and the early 2000s. Would these stories be possible today or, thanks to technology and the speed by which institutions can communicate have hampered their efforts much sooner?

Eric Prokopi because obsessed with the T. bataar bones the moment he saw them. What unfolds in this story is how Prokopi’s encounter with the fossils lead to his need to sell those fossils in the black market. It is a story of natural life trafficking that crosses the planet and delves into the world of underground fossil trade. The book, I should note, looks much lengthier than it truly is–about half of the pages are William’s research notes and references, which should indicate just how deeply researched this one is.

I admit to being a little confused at the conclusion of the book about what Prokopi ended up going to prison for, and that’s probably a result of the laws relating to his arrest being confusion. This is what happens when you commit international crime. Go into this one to learn about dinosaur fossils, the folks whose obsession moves from awe to theft, and where and how countries like Mongolia have become hotbeds for such crimes.

Who do dinosaur bones belong to, anyway? If that’s the one takeaway from the book, well, it’s a pretty good one.

 

The Falcon Thief: A True Tale of Adventure, Treachery, and The Hunt For The Perfect Bird by Joshua Hammer

In May 2010, Jeffrey Lendrum was arrested in the UK at an airport after a security guard in one of the lounges thought something suspicious was going on. Lendrum had left his partner in the lounge while he went into the bathroom for twenty minutes. The guard went in after and noticed nothing had been touched while he was in there — no shower, no running water. But there was a suspicious looking egg in the garbage can. Before long, it was discovered Lendrum had numerous eggs secured to his body, along with numerous eggs in his luggage. These were the eggs of falcons, each of which — were they to make it alive to his destination in Dubai — would net him a lot of money from political leaders in the region who practiced the art and sport of falconry. 

From here, the book follows the rise of falconry in the middle east and how it ties into their history, as well as how it is Lendrum got caught up in the theft of some of the world’s most rare raptor eggs and how he traversed some of the most dangerous places in order to steal the eggs and make a profit. It’s a fascinating and infuriating story, not only because of how it plays into disturbing nature and causing further harm to hurting species, but also because of how Lendrum’s passion for nature went so off-course from his boyhood days in South Africa. 

The Falcon Thief, besides its obvious exploration of theft of eggs, has some moments of animal harm, but it’s one I think those who are sensitive to that might be able to stomach without too much problem. Hammer offers a fair assessment of why Lendrum would partake in such illegal acts, while balancing the history and legacy of falconry in the middle east. It’s not an apology nor excuse for his behavior; rather, it’s context and conjecture for the whys, particularly where Hammer was unable to get the information first-hand. 

It is bizarre to think about the books you read in The Before of COVID and those you read in The After as things. But I read this one in a hotel in San Mateo, California, in late January 2020. I remember it vividly…and I remember that memory being forever sealed into my head, in part because I was able to read it outside in the sun in January and because the flight back–out of San Francisco–was the first time I saw individuals taking COVID measures. Little did I know.

The Feather Thief: Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century by Kirk Wallace Johnson

Do not be put off by the premise of this one if you think nothing sounds more boring than a guy ho steals feathers for fly-tying. I promise–it is unbelievably interesting. This true crime book follows a man who becomes so obsessed with fly-tying that he breaks into a museum to steal their rare birds to sell the feathers for profit. Johnson’s attention to details and passion for cracking the mystery of the still-missing birds is propulsive, and the way this looks at a very specific community’s passion — in this case, the fly-tying community’s passion for very specific bird feathers — was fascinating. There’s a lot here, too, about ethics and about the ways people throughout history have sought what’s not theirs, starting with how those birds and feathers ended up in the British Museum of Natural History in the first place.

The images in this one, tucked near the back of the narrative, added a ton. I was surprised to see images of Edwin himself, who wasn’t at all what I expected (like Johnson himself had said just pages earlier), and seeing what these fly-ties looked like and the birds that drew such lust from those hobbyists made the crime all that more fascinating.

The Feather Thief may have been the first book to crack open this subgenre interest for me in a way that I could best put into words. I want to know about the crimes, yes, but more than that, I want to know about the psyche of the person behind it. What makes someone fall so deeply into a community like that of fly-tying? And how does a person move from the position of being engaged to becoming obsessive and acting on that obsession? That marriage of journalism with crime gives the right strokes of psychology and sociology, married with philosophy and history.

I know a lot of folks found Susan Orlean’s The Library Book another solid example in this micro genre, but I was not as smitten with it. I found the vocational awe to overwhelm the story, with the actual crime at hand–the 1986 fire at the Los Angeles Public Library’s Central Library–kind of being secondary to talking about how cool libraries and library workers are. The photos in it were also just bad and added nothing. Others disagree with me, given the high ratings of the book across the internet. It’s unfortunate for me, though, since it did not make me want to hurry and pick up the other white collar true crime book in Orlean’s arsenal: The Orchid Thief.

 

There are several other books within this niche, and though I haven’t read them, it’s worth including them for readers eager for more. As I mentioned, this is a very white and very male category of books which is in and of itself worth unpacking. Who gets their criminal mischief repackaged as entertainment as opposed to a dire warning? Who gets to live their life after being caught and who ends up finding themselves harmed in the process?

If a story about the wild Asian arowana, one of the world’s rarest fish, sounds up your alley, then the book you’ll want to pick up is Emily Voigt’s The Dragon Behind the Glass: A True Story of Power, Obsession, and the World’s Most Coveted Fish.

How about America’s flower selling culture and the quest to replicate a rare ghost orchid? That’ll be for you in Susan Orlean’s The Orchid Thief.

I did read The Truffle Underground: A Tale of Mystery, Mayhem, and Manipulation in the Shadowy Market of the World’s Most Expensive Fungus by Ryan Jacobs, and it, too, fits nicely into this subgenre, with a bit of caveat. The story is not quite as narratively-driven as the others here, but that exchange in writing style does not shortchange the story of folks who become obsessed with truffles and “hunting” them. I had no idea what a mess the truffle industry is top to bottom (I like truffle oil, though admit the aftertaste is what ultimately makes me decide to go for it or not–if I am not in the mood to enjoy that truffle flavor for the rest of the day, I’m going to skip it).

The Less People Know About Us: A Mystery of Betrayal, Family Secrets, and Stolen Identity by Axton Betz-Hamilton does not exactly fit this list but deserves a place here anyway. This is a memoir, but it’s bloodless true crime memoir about identity theft and the ways and hows Axton’s parents dealt with having their identities stolen over and over…and how her own identity was stolen from her by those she thought she could trust. This book gets billed as a mystery, which I think is unfair. There’s not really a mystery here in the sense of a “whodunit?” It’s much more a “whydunit?” Readers who, like me, dig the crime books above will find this one captivating, too.

 

*Someday maybe I’ll see about putting this story into a book format–I wonder if Blumberg, like his art thief counterpart Breitwieser, would ever grant personal interviews. He’s 75, so perhaps this is a question to find an answer to sooner, rather than later.