Murderous reads for the season

When I was a child, I used to love watching scary movies with my dad. He had this great La-Z-Boy chair that the two of us could fit in, and on weekends we would rent a movie or two (VHS, mind you), make popcorn, and terrify ourselves silly. Well, I was terrified (hence, two people in one chair), but I don't think he was. We watched all the biggies from the day: Halloween, Carrie, The Shining, Friday the 13th, Alien (I made him take me to that in the theatre, I was like 6, what was he thinking?), The Omen, The Exoricst, The Amityville Horror...the list goes on. I loved it, letting myself be scared just as much as I wanted to, but being safe and able to cover my eyes whenever I needed to. As I got older, I didn't really enjoy being scared as much (real world too scary, maybe?), and I stopped watching horror movies for the most part. I still enjoy a good mystery and have a certain predilection for murder stories, so in honor of the upcoming Halloween season (who doesn't like a bit of scare for Halloween?), I've rounded up some new books about murder. They are all nonfiction, which makes them all the more scary.

• The Axeman of New Orleans: the True Story by Miriam Davis / A serial killer terrorizes early-20th century New Orleans, breaking into shops and homes, killing with a cleaver and axe. A well-researched and engaging account of a murder investigation before modern police methods.
• H.H. Holmes : the True History of the White City Devil by Adam Selzer / Another account of everyone's favorite Chicago madman (see The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson, if you haven't already), this one goes deep. Selzer has done exhaustive research on Holmes, and this book follows his every step, almost literally (the author gives mystery-related walking tours of Chicago in his other job) and gives further, fact-checked detail to his gruesome story.
• City of Light, City of Poison: Murder, Magic, and the First Police Chief of Paris by Holly Tucker / Seventeenth-century Paris. Poisonings. Witchcraft. Murderous royals. Secret tribunals and executions. What more do you want?
• The Courtesan and the Gigolo: the Murders in the Rue Montaigne and the Dark Side of Empire in Nineteenth-Century Paris by Aaron Freundschuh / Paris again, 200 years later, and a series of murders in the demimonde world of women considered to be on the fringe of respectable society. An investigation into the murders and trial that followed, as well as the social and political upheavals of the time.
• The Man From the Train: the Solving of a Century-Old Serial Killer Mystery by Bill James and Rachel McCarthy James / Baseball statistician James turns his eye for detail to a series of unsolved murders that he finds to be the work of one man. Using primary records from the day, as well as forensic research and reasoning available to us now, he outlines the similarities between numerous multiple murders, including those in Villisca, Ia. His affable manner of presentation is kind of down-home, like your grandpa is telling about all these murders...a little different, but not bad.
• The Spider and the Fly: a Reporter, a Serial Killer, and the Meaning of Murder by Claudia Rowe / A more modern murder story, this one from Poughkeepsie, NY, involving a well-mannered community college student who has the bodies of eight women in his attic and basement. Rowe becomes obsessed with trying to understand the murderer and his psyche, and ends up examining herself in the process.

And, just to be clear, my dad and I watched things besides horror movies...he also took me to Gremlins and the Indiana Jones movies, and we watched a lot of John Wayne. So, totally normal.