A True-Crime Reading List
Spend time with tales of an audacious prison break, a mobster’s downfall, and more.
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In today’s reading list, Atlantic journalists offer an intricate examination of those who swindle or hurt others, and those who must live with the fallout. The stories below follow a con man turned true-crime writer, a prison break facilitated by a dog crate, the spectacle of murder fandoms, and more.
The Con Man Who Became a True-Crime Writer
In his old life, Matthew Cox told stories to scam his way into millions of dollars. Now he’s trying to sell tales that are true.
By Rachel Monroe
The True Story of the Married Woman Who Smuggled Her Boyfriend Out of Prison in a Dog Crate
She wanted to escape her marriage. He wanted to escape his life sentence.
By Michael J. Mooney
They Stole Yogi Berra’s World Series Rings. Then They Did Something Really Crazy.
The childhood friends behind the most audacious string of sports-memorabilia heists in American history
By Ariel Sabar
For years, he used fake identities to charm women out of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Then his victims banded together to take him down.
By Rachel Monroe
The Gross Spectacle of Murder Fandom
After four University of Idaho students were killed, TikTok and Reddit sleuths swarmed the campus. The community is still struggling with the wreckage they left behind.
By McKay Coppins
The Mobster Who Bought His Son a Hockey Team
A tale of goons, no-show jobs, and a legendary minor-league franchise that helped land its owner in prison
By Rich Cohen
The Tomb Raiders of the Upper East Side
Inside the Manhattan DA’s Antiquities Trafficking Unit
By Ariel Sabar
The Rise and Fall of an All-Star Crew of Jewel Thieves
They were highly sophisticated. The local police seemed helpless. Then a retired septuagenarian detective stepped in.
By Geoff Manaugh
The Week Ahead
- Season 2 of The Night Agent, an action series about an FBI agent who is drawn into the mysterious world of the Night Action organization (streaming on Netflix on Thursday)
- We Do Not Part, a book by Han Kang that follows the friendship between two Korean women and the massacre on Jeju Island (out Tuesday)
- Presence, a horror film told from the perspective of a spirit bound to a family’s suburban home (in theaters Friday)
Essay
America Just Kinda, Sorta Banned Cigarettes
By Nicholas Florko
No drug is quite like nicotine. When it hits your bloodstream, you’re sent on a ride of double euphoria: an immediate jolt of adrenaline, like a strong cup of coffee injected directly into your brain, along with the calming effect of a beer. Nicotine is what gets people hooked on cigarettes, despite their health risks and putrid smell. It is, in essence, what cigarette companies are selling, and what they’ve always been selling. Without nicotine, a cigarette is just smoldering leaves wrapped in some fancy paper.
But if the Biden administration gets its way, that’s essentially all cigarettes will be.
More in Culture
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- A singing chimp isn’t the wildest part of Better Man.
- Where Han Kang’s nightmares come from
- A Palestinian story unlike any other
- A Holocaust novel confronts fiction’s limits.
Catch Up on The Atlantic
- How Trump made Biden’s Gaza peace plan happen
- David Frum on Justin Trudeau’s performative self-regard
- The one Trump pick Democrats actually like
Photo Album
Take a look at the top images in this year’s “Life in Another Light” biannual infrared-photography competition.
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