We read about crimes (and I write about them) not merely to know “whodunit,” but to peer into the hidden architecture of choice—the fragile lines between decency and destruction, the moments when an ordinary life tilts toward darkness. I’ve spent decades tracing that fault line, from the bloody backroads of Wyoming to antiseptic courtrooms in sprawling cities, and still the abyss stares back at me.
I was a boy in Casper when two sisters were abducted, violated, and thrown from a bridge into the North Platte River in 1973. One survived; the other did not. The men who did it looked ordinary—friendly enough to offer a ride on a cold night. Their faces haunt me not because they were monsters from a gothic story, but because they were us, only a few choices removed. The true terror—and fascination—is that monstrosity is never far; it lives invisibly in the everyday, waiting for the right—or wrong—moment to surface. I wrote about it in THE DARKEST NIGHT.
COMING MAY 5
Perhaps that is the puzzle. Criminal behavior is not a foreign country; it is one street over, a place we sometimes visit in our nightmares. We peer over the backyard fence into different yards because we need to understand how the map works. Is the line between good and evil drawn in ink, or in sand? I’ve sat with killers who wept over the families they destroyed, and with victims who confessed small sins in the same breath they recounted unimaginable suffering. Morality, I’ve learned, is rarely absolute. It bends under the weight of fear, greed, loneliness, rage—ancient pressures that have existed since Cain picked up the rock.
Choice is the sharper blade. We like to believe we are rational agents, captains of our souls. Yet every true-crime story whispers otherwise. A man wakes up ordinary, kisses his wife goodbye, then—hours later—stands over a body, wondering how the day unraveled so completely. Consequences are merciless teachers. They arrive too late for the perpetrator and too soon for the rest of us. We read these stories to rehearse the moment when our own moral compass might spin wildly. We want to believe we would choose differently, yet the fascination persists because deep down we know the terrain is treacherous for everyone.
There is a gravitational pull to the unknown, a compulsion to see how the pieces fit, and a fascination with the moral puzzles beneath every story’s surface. I once sat across from a triple killer who had done things I could barely imagine. Yet in that long, surreal conversation, I understood why he did them. Mysteries—fiction or fact—demand empathy. They force us to see the world through someone else’s eyes, to explore fear, obsession, and the consequences of choices while keeping one foot firmly on the lighted path of our own lives. We are invited into the shadows, but we can close the book when the darkness becomes too much.
Part of the allure lies in empathy, that strange, powerful force that makes us care about the people inhabiting these pages. We follow detectives, victims, and even criminals, not simply for the plot, but to understand them: why they acted as they did, what drove them to secrets, lies, or desperate measures. Mystery stories allow us to navigate the ethical and emotional landscape of human nature with a rigor life rarely affords. We are simultaneously judge and observer, theorist and witness, feeling the tension of each decision without ever being fully responsible for its consequences.
For me, the fascination began early. I remember poring over old newspaper clippings in my hometown library, drawn not just to the facts, but to the stories hidden between the lines: a vanished spouse, a disputed inheritance, a town scandal scrubbed from memory. Each case was a window into human motives, the eternal struggle between desire, fear, and conscience. That curiosity became a habit, a lens through which I view the world, and eventually, the fuel for my writing.
Crime stories are modern morality plays. They let us explore darkness safely while reminding us that darkness is never far. The thrill is not in the gore or the chase; it is in the recognition. The criminal is not an alien. He is the man in the mirror on his worst day. We return to these mysteries again and again because they offer a mirror: a reflection of our desire to know, to judge, and to comprehend the complexities of human behavior. They challenge us morally and mentally, and they reward our engagement with the satisfying click of resolution—or the lingering chill of an ending that refuses to let go.
And so, whether it is a locked room, a vanished heirloom, or a crime buried for decades, we turn the page. We cannot help ourselves. The human mind, it seems, is as relentless as the mysteries we chase.
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