The mystery of Harper Lee’s lost true-crime book
Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee by Casey Cep (Knopf) is actually two parallel stories: One about a real-life 1970s murder mystery, and the other […]
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What’s in your DNA? Just a killer grandma? Or gold for exploiters?
At dinner recently with an IT professional, the conversation drifted into our inexorable plunge toward the mass retailing of our privacy—from intimate data collected by smartphones, Alexa, and your own […]
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10 Songs for Every Writer’s Playlist
A lot of writers like background music while they tap out their stories. A lot don’t. So, for those writers who prefer silence, please skip to my blog about the […]
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Rainbow’s End?
This is a love story desperately seeking an end. Almost every day for the past 17 years, Babe Rainbow has looked for one face in the crowd that passes his […]
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Mass killers often care less about ‘who’ than ‘how many’
At least one person was killed and eight others were wounded when shooters opened fire Tuesday inside a suburban Denver middle school. Two suspects—an adult man and a juvenile girl—have […]
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10 Wyoming Crime Facts You Didn’t Know
A killer’s dead eyeballs? A truant teenager who kills a mass murderer? A lady serial killer? You’ve been warned. Reading this list will probably change the way you think about […]
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Fathers playing catch with sons
My son’s eyes brightened when he saw his new baseball glove. He was about to start a sort of pre-school for Little Leaguers, and he buried his face in the […]
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Why I don’t care about Ted Bundy
The short answer My crime-writing friend Kevin Sullivan is the greatest living expert on Ted Bundy. He’s literally written an encyclopedia of everything Bundy. I have absolutely nothing to add. […]
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And now, the road.
The Author is fond of researching a new story. The Author is delighted to write that story. But most of all, The Author loves—truly, madly, deeply—being among readers. This weekend, […]
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15 Best Places for Writers to Retire
What writer wouldn’t want to live on “Ernest Heming Way”? We love the irony or whatever it is. Nobody really knows what irony means. Anyway, as I approach the official […]
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Die different.
“One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple.” —Jack Kerouac, “The Dharma Bums” A long time ago, in another life, I sat with Jan Kerouac, the […]
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A ghost in the machine, by Ron Franscell
Twenty years ago, in 1999, the Chicago Sun-Times’ legendary book editor Henry Kisor—who had fallen in love with my first novel Angel Fire—asked me to be one of 10 American […]
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A crime. A boy. A teacher. And a hundred books.
“Up ahead they’s a thousand lives we might live, but when it comes, it’ll on’y be one.” The Grapes of Wrath Fourteen years ago, a couple Southeast Texas high school kids just […]
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Cry later.
Not long ago, I stood with my wife Mary at the Houston grave of murderous Texas mother Andrea Yates’ five children, whom she drowned in her bathtub. I was writing […]
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Let me tell you about my first time
I started reading young. I fell in crazy-mad love with books, or at least became addicted to the way they made me feel. I began to wish that I could […]
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Tour dates for new true crime book ‘Alice & Gerald’
Now you can meet Ron Franscell, the Edgar-nominated author of “Alice & Gerald: A Homicidal Love Story”—a new true-crime book ripped from Wyoming headlines—at readings, Q&A, and free book signings […]
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Atticus Finch and the #MeToo movement
You know the story: A young lawyer named Atticus Finch is appointed to defend a black man against rape charges in Depression-era Alabama. His defense is vigorous, but ultimately futile […]
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History repeating? Anita Hill, Kavanaugh … and George Hennard
While he ate alone at a small table, he watched the TV over the beer cooler. The evening news was replaying yesterday’s clips of the Senate hearings into […]
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Stealing pennies from dead kids’ eyes
“You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.” —Rahm Emanuel, Obama aide and Chicago mayor Today, the Left is outraged that the Right has instantly politicized the murder […]
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Dead Man Talking: Killers’ last words can be humorous … and monstrous
As it does fairly regularly, Texas executed a killer on Tuesday. Christopher Young, 34, shot a San Antonio convenience store clerk to death in 2004. The victim’s family had begged […]
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A father, a son, and the longest day
Excerpted from “The Sourtoe Cocktail Club,” by Ron Franscell (Globe Pequot Press, 2011). While Matt sleeps, I watch the subtly changing sky as the sun circles around to the north […]
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A modest proposal to relieve the burden of immigrant kids
It is a sad thing to those who walk through this great country, when they see the streets crowded with immigrants followed by three, four, or six children. Instead of […]
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Is true crime as entertainment morally defensible?
I’ve been writing true crime for 10 years. I confess to occasional pangs that I am reopening wounds for a few people, but the old-school journalist in me rationalizes that […]
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20 years ago today, ‘Angel Fire’ was published
On this day—June 4—in 1998, a tiny publisher in an Alabama small town released a little book, a first novel by an unknown writer in Wyoming. It didn’t change the world but it changed the writer’s life. The little book was titled “Angel Fire.” And the author was me.
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