This author was an early fan of true crime fiction

Theodore Dreiser's novel, An American Tragedy, was once controversial for its depiction of depravity and violence but has endured as a classic.

The Classic - An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser

In 1906 a woman named Grace Brown was murdered by Chester Gillette. The murder trial was all over the newspapers, and the guilty verdict led to his death sentence. This trial inspired Theodore Dreiser's novel, An American Tragedy.

Dreiser's novel is fictional and takes heavy inspiration from the actual murder case. However, it's clear that Dreiser was a fan of true crime in the early 1900s.

This novel follows the life of Clyde Griffiths (who shares initials with Chester Gillette) as he faces hardship after hardship. Then, just as his life seems to be getting better, he has to make a hard decision, how to murder his mistress. An American Tragedy isn't a story about a mystery to solve but instead looks into why Clyde chose his path.

An American Tragedy

by Dreiser, Theodore

An American Tragedy (1925) is a novel by Theodore Dreiser. Written and rewritten over a number of years, An American Tragedy is a weighty epic with a clear-eyed vision of the decay at the heart of industrialized society. Based on the murder of Grace Brown in 1906, the novel proved controversial for its depiction of depravity and violence but has endured as a classic of naturalist fiction and remains a powerful example of social critique nearly a century after its publication. A young Midwesterner bucks against his puritan upbringing, drinking with acquaintances and frequenting prostitutes when he isn't busy working any number of thankless jobs. As friends and lovers come and go, he fails to find footing in a society fueled by ambition and cunning. Forced to flee Kansas City after a deadly auto accident, Clyde moves to Chicago before settling in Lycurgus, New York, where he meets a young farmgirl named Roberta Allen. When she becomes pregnant, Clyde begins to feel his dreams of freedom fade, and longs for a way out of marriage. Desperate and confused, he turns to a beautiful socialite named Sondra Finchley, the daughter of a local factory owner. Clyde knows what he should do--marry Roberta, settle down, raise a family--but his reckless ways refuse to remain in the past. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy is a classic of American literature reimagined for modern readers.

Our Modern Companions

We've paired this classic with not one but three companions for your consideration. Dreiser's story is essentially a founding father in the world of domestic thrillers while additionally opening the doors for True Crime novels.

First, we look at another classic, Truman Capote's In Cold Blood. In 1966, Capote dove into the murders of the Clutter family, but unlike the fictionalized series of events that Dreiser developed to ask why Capote used a more fact-based tale.

The second two delve into the insanely popular psychological thriller, one you could credit Dreiser's novel with partially founding. In both books, the female protagonists desperately search for the answers to what is happening and why.

A Flicker in the Dark

by Willingham, Stacy

A New York Times Bestseller

"A smart, edge-of-your-seat story with plot twists you'll never see coming. Stacy Willingham's debut will keep you turning pages long past your bedtime." – Karin Slaughter

When Chloe Davis was twelve, six teenage girls went missing in her small Louisiana town. By the end of the summer, her own father had confessed to the crimes and was put away for life, leaving Chloe and the rest of her family to grapple with the truth and try to move forward while dealing with the aftermath.

Now twenty years later, Chloe is a psychologist in Baton Rouge and getting ready for her wedding. While she finally has a fragile grasp on the happiness she's worked so hard to achieve, she sometimes feels as out of control of her own life as the troubled teens who are her patients. So when a local teenage girl goes missing, and then another, that terrifying summer comes crashing back. Is she paranoid, seeing parallels from her past that aren't actually there, or for the second time in her life, is Chloe about to unmask a killer?

From debut author Stacy Willingham comes a masterfully done, lyrical thriller, certain to be the launch of an amazing career. A Flicker in the Dark is eerily compelling to the very last page.

In Cold Blood

by Capote, Truman

Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best nonfiction books of all time

Truman Capote's masterpiece, In Cold Blood, created a sensation when it was first published, serially, in The New Yorker in 1965. The intensively researched, atmospheric narrative of the lives of the Clutter family of Holcomb, Kansas, and of the two men, Richard Eugene Hickock and Perry Edward Smith, who brutally killed them on the night of November 15, 1959, is the seminal work of the "new journalism." Perry Smith is one of the great dark characters of American literature, full of contradictory emotions. "I thought he was a very nice gentleman," he says of Herb Clutter. "Soft-spoken. I thought so right up to the moment I cut his throat." Told in chapters that alternate between the Clutter household and the approach of Smith and Hickock in their black Chevrolet, then between the investigation of the case and the killers' flight, Capote's account is so detailed that the reader comes to feel almost like a participant in the events.