As I wrote a few months ago, with regard to true crime books, "All stories are worth telling well, but especially the difficult ones, when we need the writer's assurance as we walk down the dark passage."
As someone who occasionally takes on such stories, I'm interested in how and why other true crime writers approach the work. My lead-off interview is with Kathryn Miles, author of "TRAILED: One Woman's Quest to Solve the Shenandoah Murders," about the horrific unsolved 1996 murders of two young women with Shenandoah National Park.
Miles does what the best true crime writers do. She takes on the awesome responsibility of explaining murder, with compassion and clear-eyes and deeply empathetic reporting.
As she writes in TRAILED, "Maybe, just maybe, when two selfless, joyful, beautiful humans die in a place, what's left behind is not the agony of their deaths, but the brilliance of their lives."
Miles is the author of Superstorm: Nine Days Inside Hurricane Sandy and Quakeland: On the Road to America's Next Devastating Earthquake, among other books. More about Miles at kathrynmiles.net - N.R.
Trailed: One Woman's Quest to Solve the Shenandoah Murders, by Kathryn Miles.
Shot in the Heart, by Mikal Gilmore
Lost Girls, by Robert Kolker
Blood Will Out, by Walter Kirn
The Adversary, by Emmanuel Carrere
Columbine, by Dave Cullen
Down City, by Leah Carroll
I’ll Be Gone in the Dark, by Michelle McNamara
Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland
The Journalist and the Murderer, by Janet Malcom
Helter Skelter, by Vincent Bugliosi
In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote
Crossed Over, by Beverly Lowry
Under the Banner of Heaven, by Jon Krakauer
Down That Dark Passage: Kathyrn Miles of "TRAILED: One Woman's Quest to Solve the Shenandoah Murders"