Sunday Morning Book Thread (01/04/2026) [MP4]

Good morning, book lovers! CBD was kind enough – or foolish enough, depending on your view – to ask me to host a Sunday Book Thread, and so here I am.

If you were around when the Book Thread posted pictures of my home library a while back, you might have noticed that one set of shelves contained books on true crime and mystery, which is going to be today’s topic. I, myself, make a distinction between the two: ‘true crime’ is something like Jack the Ripper, Lizzie Borden or the Son of Sam. A ‘mystery’ would be something unexplainable, such as Offyreus and his perpetual motion machine, the Bermuda Triangle or the vanishing of Richard Colvin Cox. Of course, some of these can be combinations; the Borden case is both true crime (her parents were axed to death) and a mystery (who did it and how?). I’m going to highlight a few books in each category that I enjoy.

Jack the Ripper: probably the most famous of true crimes, and probably the one with the looniest suggested solutions (ask me about Lewis Carroll as the Ripper. Yes, seriously). The gold standard for years was Donald Rumbelow’s Jack the Ripper: The Complete Casebook (1988). Rumbelow, a former Metropolitan Police officer, gives a detailed history not only of the murders, but also the social and political scene in 1888 London. Although he never endorses a suspect, as a man on the inside, he has valuable thoughts as to why the police were never able to bring the Ripper to heel.

The late historian Philip Sugden tackled the Autumn of Terror with a doorstop of a tome, The Complete History of Jack the Ripper (2002). He covers the same areas as Rumbelow, but in much deeper detail, as well as assessing the major candidates for Jack. He comes cautiously down on the side of the barber Severin Klosowski, but admits that the case against him is far from proven. This is the book to have if you want a thorough analysis of the murders.

Other crimes: the publisher Carroll & Graf has a series, The Mammoth Book of , which covers everything from true crime to SF, history and beyond. If you’re looking for something to dip into at a spare moment, pick up The Mammoth Book of Unsolved Crimes (1999). The big ones are there – the Ripper, the Zodiac, the Black Dahlia – as well as the more obscure, but no less mystifying – the killing of Mary Rogers, the death of Bella Wright and the absolutely baffling poisoning of Lieutenant Hubert Chevis.

Mysteries: in my experience, books about ‘unsolved mysteries’ or ‘mysteries of the unknown’ are generally superficial and cover the same topics over and over again – the Nazca lines, the Great Pyramid of Giza, the riddle of the Mary Celeste – lots of sizzle, not much steak. I have a number of them in my collection, but if I were recommending to you, I’d start with The Encyclopedia of Unsolved Mysteries by Colin and Damon Wilson (1988 ). The father-and-son team split entries between them: Colin tackles psychic powers and haunted locations (UFOs, the Barbados Vault) while Damon speculates on ‘historic’ mysteries (the treasure of Rennes-le-Château, the Shroud of Turin). A little outdated in places and in spots rather outré, but nice to settle down with on a cold winter’s day.

In the 1970s, a research librarian named Lawrence David Kusche got tired of being asked about the Bermuda Triangle and decided to compile an easily-accessible dossier that he could forward to anyone interested. To his surprise, the more he looked into the ‘curse’ of the Triangle, the more he realized that almost every vanishing or oddity was either a lie or had a perfectly rational explanation. He compiled his work into The Bermuda Triangle Mystery - Solved (1995), which covers all of the major Triangle ‘mysteries:’ the Mary Celeste, Flight 19, the Marine Sulphur Queen and provides weather reports, Air Force briefings and newspaper accounts which destroy the common narrative of the ‘Vile Vortice.’ An absolute must.

What about you? What crimes or mysteries hold your attention? Which would you like to see solved?

posted by Open Blogger at 09:00 AM

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