Book Review: The Crime Buff's Guide series by Ron Franscell and others

The Crime Buff’s Guide series

by Ron Franscell and others (various)

 

Between 2010 and 2017, true-crime writer Ron Franscell, sometimes working with additional researchers, published a series of 8 volumes called “The Crime Buff’s Guide to…_____”. Entries covered Los Angeles, Texas, Washington DC, Pennsylvania, The Rockies, The Southwest, Arizona and New Mexico. The libraries have available the Rockies volume in paperback, and the Southwest and Los Angeles volumes as eBooks.

 

Each volume follows a similar pattern — the books are broken into chapters, either geographically or thematically. The Rockies volume, for example, has chapters on The Denver Metro Area, The Colorado Front Range, The Colorado Western Slope, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and the Wild Bunch, and a final chapter on Wyoming. Each chapter starts with a map, covering the wide area of all the crimes that follow. The crimes covered range from relatively recent to historical, mostly murder but also sometimes bank robberies, major fraud and disappearances. Each crime (or series of crimes) receives its own set of pages — starting with the physical address and GPS coordinates to locate it, where a crime took place, followed by a description of the crime in question — ranging from simplistic to very detailed. Most entries then also include photo illustrations — pictures of the victims, the killers, the grave-sites, the buildings where murders took place, etc.

 

There are occasional sidebar articles, related to the main focus articles, and Franscell includes booklists that feature titles readers can track down for additional information on many of the cases he includes. As the series grew, he tended to re-use entries from earlier volumes in the later volumes, when there were thematically-appropriate reasons (even if occasionally tenuous).

 

If you’re a true crime “buff” and would like to learn tidbits about a LOT of different crimes in the areas covered, rather than exhaustively researched full books on individual crimes/criminals, this is definitely a series to sample — the 5 volumes not owned by the libraries can be borrowed through InterLibrary Loan. (Disclaimer: One of my best friends was Franscell’s co-author on the Pennsylvania entry, and she has shared many discussions with me about how much research goes into compiling volumes like these. Believe me…it’s a lot!)

 

(The true crime section in all Lincoln City Libraries locations is generally under 364, with murder cases being 364.152, in case you’d like to browse for additional reading material. Also, a new library-sponsored book group — Once Upon a Crime — started meeting once a month at the Gere Branch library this Fall. Check out the link for their upcoming schedule and monthly focus topics.)

 

( official Crime Buff’s Guide page on the official Ron Franscell web site — sadly, the series has been discontinued )

 

Recommended by Scott C.
Bennett Martin Public Library — Public Service

 

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