Please note that I received this book via NetGalley. This did not affect my rating or review.
Not what I was expecting. This honestly is a good primer if you have not read a true crime book before. But I was familiar with about 90 percent of the stories that the author chose to provide details to. What was unexpected was this book included definitions for certain things such as bail and then did a lot of trivia throughout. The book just jumped back and forth and I wish that the book had more structure. Maybe get into famous cases (by alphabetical order) first and then include a glossary or a section on terms. Then include a section on books that a reader can read further details about along with movie/tv adaptations.
“The True Crime File” book is an adaptation of the “A Year of True Crime Page-A-Day” calendar. I have never heard of the calendar and am going to hard pass on that. I don’t mind reading about true crime, but I can’t see myself wanting to see a new terrible fact every day when I look at my calendar. My current calendar is a Ladies of Literature Desk Calendar. January was Dorothy Parker, February was Emily Dickinson, March was Octavia Butler and now the month of April is Sylvia Plath.
Back to the book. I did love the font and pictures included in this book. It was very easy to read I thought. I just wanted something with more oomph. Also, I wish that Daly had done things in chronological order. Start with either serial killings, or kidnappings, cons, survivors, cons, etc. Also the sections on some of the subjects felt very short to me. I get why though if it’s just a longer form version of the calendar a day. As I said earlier the book jumps around a lot and there’s a lot of information in these book. We get trivia like, put together how a list of murderers got caught, and here’s a list of books you can read that go into this and this, etc. It is definitely made to just be a book you dip into and out of. But I can’t see myself wanting this for myself though.
Here are some pages that I took pictures of that I found interesting.
Yeah that Truly Crazy Love article was a lot. That was one of the stories I was unfamiliar with.
As you can see though the font, pictures, etc. make for a good reading experience.
Since this is being sold as a nice gift to give to a True Crime enthusiast, I can see that many would appreciate this.
