The Tragedy of True Crime - by John J Lennon (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

In 2001, John J. Lennon killed a man on a Brooklyn Street. Now he's a journalist, working from behind bars, trying to make sense of it all.

The Tragedy of True Crime is a first-person journalistic account of the lives of four men who have killed, written by a man who has killed. Lennon entered the New York prison system with a sentence of 28 years to life but after he stepped into a writing workshop at Attica Correctional Facility, his whole life changed. Reporting from the cell block and the prison yard, Lennon challenges our obsession with true crime by telling the full life stories of men now serving time for the lives they took.

These men have completely different backgrounds -- Robert Chambers, a preppy Manhattanite turned true crime celebrity; Milton E. Jones, a seventeen-year-old coaxed from burglary into something far darker; and Michael Shane Hale, a gay man caught in a crime of passion -- and all are searching to find meaning and redemption behind bars. Lennon's reporting is intertwined with his own story, from a young man seduced by the infamous gangster culture of New York City to a celebrated prison journalist. The same desire echoes throughout the lives of these four men: to become more than murderers.

A first-of-its-kind book of immersive prison journalism, The Tragedy of True Crime poses fundamental questions about the stories we tell and who gets to tell them. What essential truth do we lose when we don't consider all that comes before an act of unthinkable violence? And what happens to the convicted after the cell gate locks?

Review Quotes

"In this remarkable book, John J. Lennon knits together intimate, richly reported stories of four imprisoned killers - one of them Lennon himself. He renders his subjects human without excusing or sensationalizing their crimes. But his real subject is us, the audience, the millions of viewers who have made the "true crime" genre an entertainment that strips crime of its context and consequences. This is first-rate journalism, practiced up close in a high-risk environment."
--Bill Keller, former editor of the New York Times and founding editor of The Marshall Project

About the Author

John J. Lennon is now serving his twenty-fourth year behind bars, currently in Sing Sing Correctional Facility. His writing has appeared in the New York Review of Books, the New York Times Magazine, the New Yorker, the Atlantic, Esquire, and New York magazine. His work has been anthologized in the Best American Magazine Writing, and he's twice been a finalist for the National Magazine Award, in feature writing and reviews and criticism. His feature essay "The Apology Letter" was part of the Washington Post Magazine's special issue that won the National Magazine Award.