Books That Make You Live Alongside an Immersive True Crime Investigator

True crime stories, as many of us know, are among the most riveting, filled with intrigue and enigma and real victims for whom we can’t help but empathize with. Understanding the victim’s experience, and to relay that realness to readers, requires the unique skills of a true true crime author.

Attorney and researcher Doug Kari exposed The Berman Murders, the story of Barry Berman, heir to the Kahlua fortune, and his wife Louise, who went missing in 1986 in Saline Valley, a popular Mojave Desert draw for nudists and eccentrics.

Doug brings to his subjects rigorous research and compelling storytelling, enhanced by his method of immersive investigation. This style has led him inside the grave of a murder victim, in order to imagine the carnage befalling them just before death.

His true-crime stories have graced the front pages of LA Weekly, Las Vegas Review-Journal, San Francisco Daily Journal, and other well-circulated outlets. An English major at U.C. Berkeley, Doug honed his writing under novelist Leonard Michaels (The Men’s Club). After receiving his law degree from U.C. Law San Francisco, he practiced IP law while doing pro bono wilderness protection work for Desert Survivors, an outdoor group that he co-founded.

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