Ripped from the Headlines!

<p><b>Bestselling true-crime master Harold Schechter explores the real-life headline-making psychos, serial murderers, thrill-hungry couples, and lady-killers who inspired a century of classic films.</b></p><p>The necktie murders in Alfred Hitchcock’s <i>Frenzy</i>; <i>Chicago</i>’s Jazz Age crime of passion; the fatal hookup in <i>Looking for Mr. Goodbar</i>; the high school horrors committed by the costumed slasher in <i>Scream</i>. These and other cinematic crimes have become part of pop-culture history. And each found inspiration in true events that provided the raw material for our greatest blockbusters, indie art films, black comedies, Hollywood classics, and grindhouse horrors.</p><p>So what’s the reality behind <i>Psycho</i>, <i>Badlands</i>, <i>The Hills Have Eyes</i>, <i>A Place in the Sun</i>, <i>Arsenic and Old Lace</i>, and <i>Dirty Harry</i>? How did such tabloid-ready killers as Bonnie and Clyde, body snatchers Burke and Hare, Texas sniper Charles Whitman Jr., nurse-slayer Richard Speck, and Leopold and Loeb exert their power on the public imagination and become the stuff of movie lore?</p><p>In this collection of revelatory essays, true-crime historian Harold Schechter takes a fascinating trip down the crossroads of fact and fiction to reveal the sensational real-life stories that are more shocking, taboo, and fantastic than even the most imaginative screenwriter can dream up.</p>