The Tragedy of True Crime: Four Guilty Men and the Stories That Define Us

Lennon, a contributing editor at Esquire and a convicted murderer, debuts with a fascinating blend of journalism and memoir. The author, who’s serving 28 years to life in New York’s Sing Sing prison for killing a man in Brooklyn in 2001, twines his own story with those of three fellow inmates, each also convicted of murder. Michael Shane Hale killed his older male lover in 1995; Lennon fleshes out his closeted early life in Appalachia. Milton E. Jones killed two priests during a botched robbery in late ’80s Buffalo, where he grew up poor with a teenage mother. Rob Chambers, better known as “the Preppie Killer,” notoriously killed a woman during drug-fueled sex in Central Park in 1986, then turned to creative writing behind bars (Lennon describes his work as “like an East Coast version of Bret Easton Ellis”). Lennon paints meticulous portraits of each man’s personal lives before and during prison, successfully humanizing his subjects and contextualizing their crimes. In the process, he poses provocative questions about the flattening effects of true crime-as-entertainment and makes forceful arguments for empathy. It’s both a sobering glimpse of life behind bars and a stinging rebuttal to the public’s appetite for tragedy. Agent: William LoTurco, LoTurco Literary. (Sept.)