THE TRAGEDY OF TRUE CRIME

True stories of homicide from the perspective of the perpetrator.

Lennon, a journalist whose pieces have appeared in the Atlantic, New York Review of Books, and elsewhere, is a convicted killer who has been incarcerated in some of the most infamous prisons in New York state, including Sing Sing and Attica. Here, in his first book, he turns the true-crime genre inside out, taking a close look at the complicated lives and tragic consequences of the bad choices that convicted killers like himself have made. In addition to his own story, he explores the lives and crimes of three fellow convicts, all of whom he interviewed in person at length, all of whom committed headline-grabbing homicides: Michael Shane Hale, whose impulsive murder and dismemberment of his abusive lover became a controversial test case for New York’s brief experiment with reviving the death penalty in the late 1990s; Milton Jones, convicted for his part in the shocking murders and robberies of two priests in separate incidents in Buffalo in 1987; and Robert Chambers, the notorious “Preppy Killer” whose strangulation of Jennifer Levin in Central Park came to epitomize for New York media the excesses of the go-go 1980s. Among the details of his peers’ stories, Lennon finds echoes of his own experience growing up in Brooklyn and Hell’s Kitchen on a path to crime. The language is direct and unsentimental, reflecting the grim reality of prison life. But Lennon does elicit and share the flawed but poignant humanity of his subjects. Each struggles in his own way to live up to social justice activist Bryan Stevenson’s mantra, “Each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done.”

Thoughtful, enlightening, and truth-seeking personal journalism.