True Crime has always been a guilty pleasure of mine \u2013 maybe it\u2019s the lawyer in me. Generally not the violent stuff (although Truman Capote\u2019s classic In Cold Blood<\/i> and Erik Larson\u2019s The Devil in the White City <\/i> are two of my all-time favorites); I gravitate more toward true stories of con men, conterfeiters and swindlers. I\u2019m not sure what that says about me. I try not to think too hard about it. Like many of the most interesting (to me) literary true crime books, The Man Who Loved Books Too Much<\/i> explores the nuts and bolts of how a crime was committed, but also takes a shot at understanding the thief\u2019s motivation. And all of this is set against the background of the arcane (and often seedy) world of rare book collecting, which is fascinating in itself. I\u2019ve been lucky enough to tap into a stream of similarly rich true crime books recently: The Forger\u2019s Spell<\/i>, about a master Vermeer forger and the art collecting world he duped; The Billionaire\u2019s Vinegar <\/i> (wine collecting and forgery); The Art of Making Money<\/i> (counterfeiting); and The Poet and the Murderer <\/i> (forged Emily Dickinson poems). Riveting stuff all, particularly if you have a taste for reading about the dark side of humanity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
True Crime has always been a guilty pleasure of mine \u2013 maybe it\u2019s the lawyer in me. Generally not the violent stuff (although Truman Capote\u2019s classic In Cold Blood and Erik Larson\u2019s The Devil in the White City are two of my all-time favorites); I gravitate more toward true stories of con men, conterfeiters and … <\/p>\n