Hardcover Mysteries (TV series)

Did You Know?

• The series travels inside the minds of America's most popular novelists to explore the crossover from fact to fiction.
• The show is a mix of interviews, crime scene photographs, and cinematic reenactments.
• A New York Post review awarded the documentary series 3-out-of-4 stars.

Episodes

The episode featuring David Baldacci examines the 1964 killing of Mary Meyer, a Washington, D.C. socialite. After her death, the discovery of her diary, which described an affair with President Kennedy, sparked numerous conspiracy theories and partly inspired Baldacci’s novel Absolute Power. In the Lisa Scottoline segment, police looking into a fifteen-year-old girl’s death find that the victim herself had arranged a murder-for-hire plot. Scottoline, known for writing thrillers centered on family dynamics, explores the complicated relationships within this family. Sandra Brown’s episode looks at a young man found murdered in East Texas. Authorities suspected a local gang motivated by hate committed the crime, and Brown discusses this important hate-crime case, which served as the inspiration for her book The Witness. Linda Fairstein’s installment follows the search for missing Manhattan socialite Irene Silverman, which led detectives to a mother-and-son team as the main suspects. Fairstein offers an insider’s view of the police work involved. Sara Paretsky’s episode centers on Carmin Ross, who was stabbed to death in her Lawrence, Kansas home. Paretsky was drawn to this case because of the way investigators carefully broke down the suspect’s fabricated account. Harlan Coben’s segment connects his bestselling novels Long Lost and Caught, both about missing girls and a community searching for them, to the real-life abduction of Brianna Denison in Reno, Nevada, and the lingering questions it raised. Kathy Reichs recounts the case of freelance writer Louise Ellis, who vanished during a normal weekend trip. Police focused on her new husband and her ex-boyfriend as possible suspects. Reichs, a celebrated author and forensic anthropologist, describes her own role in this major Canadian homicide investigation. Joseph Wambaugh’s episode covers the real case behind his book The Blooding. After two girls were killed in Leicester, England, investigators employed the then-new method of DNA fingerprinting to catch the serial killer.