10 famous literary works based on real crimes

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

It often happens that a high-profile crime that attracts public attention becomes a source of inspiration for a writer. It should be added that detective stories and novels, which describe criminal incidents, are always popular with readers. In our review of 10 world famous books, the plot of which is based on real-life crimes.

1. "The Great Gatsby" by Francis Scott Fitzgerald

Consider the example of the "great American novel" by Francis Scott Fitzgerald about the life of Jay Gatsby, a boy from a family of farmers in North Dakota named James "Jimmy" Gats. Jay manages to go from rags to riches - from a half-impoverished farmer from the Midwest to an eccentric rich man living on Long Island. The lighthearted playboy with infinite money is actually a crush on love who made most of his fortune from bootlegging. Gatsby's main black-market associate was the crooked businessman Meyer Wolfsheim.

It turns out that Meyer Wolfsfeim had a prototype in real life - Arnold Rothstein, a wealthy gambler who owned a number of casinos, brothels, and expensive racehorses. Rothstein was eventually killed while playing cards at the prestigious Park Central Hotel in Manhattan. The Great Gatsby novel, which is essentially a cautionary tale of the notorious American Dream, was inspired to write precisely by the life of Rothstein and the explosive growth of the get-rich-quick criminal activity during the 1920s era.

2. "American Tragedy" Theodore Dreiser

Theodore Dreiser, a major proponent of American naturalism, tells a story similar to The Great Gatsby (which was also published in 1925) in his novel American Tragedy. Dreiser's protagonist, Clyde Griffiths, is a lonely son of strict evangelicals who has been captivated by the temptations of the big city. Gradually Griffiths gets used to alcohol and prostitutes. His real downfall, however, comes when he falls in love with Roberta Alden. The girl soon became pregnant, but Clyde had a "more interesting option" - a girl from high society. After that, he decides to kill Roberta. As a result, Clyde was arrested, convicted and executed for murder.

Before sitting down to write his ambitious novel, Dreiser learned the story of Chester Gillette, the nephew of a wealthy factory owner who was convicted of the murder of his girlfriend and their four-month-old child in 1906. Given the striking similarity of the case, it can be argued that Dreiser practically rewrote the history of 22-year-old Gillette.

3. "High Window" by Raymond Chandler

The High Window (1942) is considered one of Raymond Chandler's more prominent novels about detective Philip Marlowe, as well as a classic story of abuse of power and money. Marlowe is hired to find the missing rare coin - the Brasher gold doubloon, but later he is faced with an intra-family drama, in which the young singer Linda Conquest first disappears, and then has to investigate the murder case. As it turned out later, the novel was a retelling of the case of Ned Doheny (one of the richest oilmen in California).

4. "Telling Heart" by Edgar Allan Poe

One of Edgar Allan Poe's classic "scary" stories "The Tell-Tale Heart" is a strange description of obsession - an unnamed narrator killed an old man with whom he lived in the same house due to the fact that the old man had an "evil eye" with a thorn maddened him. After killing and dismembering his victim, the narrator hides the body parts under the floorboards inside the old man's house. But gradually he begins to lose his mind, because he constantly hears the "old man's heart beating under the floorboards." Finally distraught with a ghostly heartbeat, the narrator surrendered to the police.

A special highlight of The Tell-Tale Heart is that the narrator is one of the earliest and most profound depictions of criminal psychology in popular literature. In part, this may be due to Poe being inspired to write the story of a real-life murder that rocked Salem, Massachusetts in 1830. Captain Joseph White, who lived in one of Salem's most luxurious homes, was beaten to death by an unknown assailant. At the same time, nothing at all was touched in the richly furnished house. As it turned out later, his great-nephew White Joseph Knapp and his brother John, who wanted to receive an inheritance, were guilty of the murder of Captain White.

5. "The Mystery of Marie Roger" by Edgar Allan Poe

In addition to famous horror stories, Poe also wrote several detective stories about Auguste Dupin, who in fact became the prototype of Sherlock Holmes. In the 1842 story, The Mystery of Marie Roger, Dupin and his unnamed friend (who became the prototype of Dr. Watson) lead the case of the unsolved murder of a young Parisian woman. In fact, the story is Edgar Poe's own thoughts on the notorious murder case of Mary Cecilia Rogers, whose body was found near Sybil's Cave in Hoboken, New Jersey.

6. "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" by Stig Larsson

Stig Larsson's posthumously published novel The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Millennium Series) has become a bestseller since its publication in 2005. Since then, millions of books have been sold worldwide, and numerous authors are about to write a sequel. Larsson, himself a former journalist, was inspired to write the novel by an investigation into the case of Catherine da Costa, a 28-year-old prostitute and drug addict whose body parts were found scattered throughout Stockholm in the summer of 1984. The girl was initially believed to be the victim of two doctors, one of whom was a forensic pathologist … The doctors were later acquitted. And the character in the novel Lisbeth Salander was based on a real-life rape victim named Lisbeth.

7. "Crime and Punishment" Fyodor Dostoevsky

Fyodor Dostoevsky's 1866 novel Crime and Punishment was a revolution in literature. The reader is immersed in the experiences, thoughts and reflections of the criminal Raskolnikov, who considers himself a wonderful person who has the right to murder, and the usurer is a social parasite. In writing the novel, Dostoevsky was inspired by Pierre-François Lasener, a French poet and criminal, for whom killing a person meant the same as "drinking a glass of wine." Lasener justified his crimes by the fact that he considered himself a "victim of society" and a fighter against social injustice.

8. "Bloody Harvest" by Dashil Hammett

When Dashil Hammett's The Bloody Harvest was born in 1929, the detective adventure genre was mostly English writers, whose novels mostly looked like descriptions of a bizarre murder mystery that took place mostly on private estates. These crimes were investigated by brilliant private detectives. Hammett also made the genre of detective fiction adventures more realistic and more violent.

The Bloody Harvest is set in Personville, better known as Poisonville due to its high crime rate. An employee of a detective agency arrives in the city, who later learns that Personville is actually ruled by gangs. The plot of the novel is based on the real miners' strikes in Montana, which lasted from 1912 to 1920, as well as the lynching of union leader Frank Little.

9. "Night of the Hunter" by Davis Grubb

Before the acclaimed film Night of the Hunter was released in 1955, Davis Grubb's novel of the same name was published in 1953. The novel describes the murders of ex-convict Harry Powell, who pretends to be "Reverend Powell" and marries Willa Harper, the wife of a former thief named Ben Harper. In order to get the loot from Harper's past robberies, Powell kills Willa and then her children. The novel is set against the backdrop of the Great Depression, and the character of Harry Powell was based on the real-life serial killer Harry Powers, who operated in West Virginia in the early 1930s.

10. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

A Clockwork Orange is without doubt the saddest book on this list. The novel by British writer Anthony Burgess reveals the dark side of England, which is rife with teenage violence. Alex, is the head of a gang that speaks English-Russian jargon. Alex, inspired by the music of Ludwig van Beethoven and drugs dissolved in milk, leads his gang at night on gang outings, during which teenagers engage in beating people and even murdering. Burgess wrote his novel based in large part on the Teddy Boy culture of post-war England.

Continuing the theme of exciting reading 9 books that are read in one breath per night … A great pastime for those who do not want to sleep.