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Double Lives: True Tales of the Criminals Next Door
"What makes Double Lives so terrifying is that these events are real. After 20 years as a cop, these are the stories that keep me up at night." ─ Sgt. Joseph Kuns , LAPD
#1 New Release in True Crime and Espionage
Eric Brach's true crime book Double True Tales of the Criminals Next Door offers terrifying true stories about the criminals hidden among us and the banality of evil and crime, elevated by its frank discussion of the nation-wide criminal scourge of the opioid addiction.
A true crime roller-coaster. Double Lives chronicles the very monsters who walk unnoticed among us─even serial killers like Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy, or John Wayne Gacy. They are neighbors and students, professionals and friends living out criminal double lives. Double Lives is both a nonfiction exposé and a nationwide search that details the exploits of some of the worst criminals in recent American history, all of whom succeeded in going undetected for years while perpetrating one crime after another… and all in their own hometowns. Gender? Race? Age? Socioeconomic class? It doesn’t matter.
Double Lives a sensational yet sobering read. The author also provides a personal look at opioid addiction and its current effects right alongside binge-worthy tales of two-faced criminals caught and incarcerated. If you're a fan of true crime or serial killer books such as Pretty Little Killers , Mind Hunter , If You Tell , T he Pale-Faced Lie , or The Big Book of Serial Killers , you'll love Double Lives .
#1 New Release in True Crime and Espionage
Eric Brach's true crime book Double True Tales of the Criminals Next Door offers terrifying true stories about the criminals hidden among us and the banality of evil and crime, elevated by its frank discussion of the nation-wide criminal scourge of the opioid addiction.
A true crime roller-coaster. Double Lives chronicles the very monsters who walk unnoticed among us─even serial killers like Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy, or John Wayne Gacy. They are neighbors and students, professionals and friends living out criminal double lives. Double Lives is both a nonfiction exposé and a nationwide search that details the exploits of some of the worst criminals in recent American history, all of whom succeeded in going undetected for years while perpetrating one crime after another… and all in their own hometowns. Gender? Race? Age? Socioeconomic class? It doesn’t matter.
Double Lives a sensational yet sobering read. The author also provides a personal look at opioid addiction and its current effects right alongside binge-worthy tales of two-faced criminals caught and incarcerated. If you're a fan of true crime or serial killer books such as Pretty Little Killers , Mind Hunter , If You Tell , T he Pale-Faced Lie , or The Big Book of Serial Killers , you'll love Double Lives .
256 pages, Paperback
First published August 15, 2018
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
February 6, 2019
An okay compendium of true crime cases, most of them fairly well-known. The book is less successful when the author shares his personal observations.
March 21, 2019
I liked the stories in this book. As a true crime fanatic, I am often disappointed when books have the same culprits, ones that everyone knows. This was not the case with Double Lives. Normally I am an "over-rater" so I give 5 stars to any book I enjoyed even the slightest, so the only reason I gave this book 4 stars was because I felt that it was VERY poorly edited. Although I am an English teacher and often catch errors that others probably would not, I felt that there were too many blatant errors in this book, almost as if it was rushed. I am normally not put off by this, but with this book I was. However, if you are not bothered by such things and are a true crime fan, I recommend this book for sure.
August 20, 2018
I've enjoyed reading many books over the years about horrible people, but this one is so unique. The way the facts are interwoven with the short story format and the writer's entertaining voice is perfect! Sometimes I feel a little guilty about being so entertained by true crime, but then I remember I'm a human being and this stuff is just downright fascinating. I'm not even kidding when I say I read the entire bibliography to find out where I can learn even more about these terrible people.
November 20, 2018
A fairly interesting case study of a few American criminals. I didn't find that many of the people the author chose to write about actually lived double lives; certainly Rader and Hastert did, but others, such as Knorr (side note: do NOT search for more information on her if you ever want to sleep again) were pretty clearly not even trying to pass for good people.
The author tries to make a connection between the case studies presented and his personal experience with an old friend who succumbed to a heroin addiction. While I can certainly understand the need to discuss losing someone that way, and how your personal views on addiction may need to be interrogated, it didn't really fit with the rest of the text, even after a conclusion that tried quite hard to bridge that gap. I think the author may have been better served to write a second text on the issues around drug addiction, health, and criminality rather than try to connect it to a book about serial killers, child abusers, and pedophiles.
The author tries to make a connection between the case studies presented and his personal experience with an old friend who succumbed to a heroin addiction. While I can certainly understand the need to discuss losing someone that way, and how your personal views on addiction may need to be interrogated, it didn't really fit with the rest of the text, even after a conclusion that tried quite hard to bridge that gap. I think the author may have been better served to write a second text on the issues around drug addiction, health, and criminality rather than try to connect it to a book about serial killers, child abusers, and pedophiles.
December 4, 2020
This is a decent but uneven true crime book about the “criminal next door.” The author has done some interesting research on lesser known cases which I enjoyed. Where I felt the book began to falter is when he starts talking about his own personal experiences with a friend who turned to crime due to drug addiction. It’s rather jarring to read about garden variety addiction in one chapter and mass murder in the next. Also, some of the chapters are about well known killers like BTK who have been covered to death. Still, I would recommend as a short read for true crime lovers.
September 29, 2018
This book - broken down into short chapters that focus on "ordinary" Americans who committed a range of criminal acts - reminded me of the 70s and 80s, when there were a plethora of non-fiction books released about notorious Americans doing bad deeds. Back then I gorged on books like Robert Lindsey's "Falcon and the Snowman," Mark Baker's "Cops," Joe McGinniss' "Fatal Vision" and the Ann Rule true crime books.
Eric Brach now joins the pantheon of these writers' work with "Double Lives," a compelling and totally readable exploration of why certain people in our very own neighborhoods do the horrible things they do. Spanning the 20th century and into the 21st (in locales from CA to TX to NJ), these individual stories of menace and mayhem track the criminals from their (mostly) humble backgrounds and lower- to middle-class adulthood when the troubles bloomed. Little-known offenders like arsonist John Leonard Orr to famous perpetrators of evil like the BTK killer and child molester/congressman Dennis Hastert are profiled; Brach breaks down their lives, their seeming normalcy, and their horrific crimes - as well as the aftermath and their eventual capture.
In writing about these past crimes - instead of about current, unsolved horrors - the writer has the ability to allay some of the readers' fears of these "next-door" criminals by closing the circuit on them and concluding each chapter with their capture and prison sentences. None of the criminals get away with their crimes, and all are punished and put away so that the public can sleep just a little better knowing they no longer roam our streets our our neighborhoods.
The writer also makes the curious - but ultimately successful - choice of bringing his own personal history into the mix. Brach does this from the very beginning, explaining his interest in the subject of destruction and self-destruction by relating brief stories of the people he knows who have died. In the Introduction, and in two separate chapters, he inserts himself into the book with these stories of loss and addiction. In the two "Evan" chapters, he deals with his struggles of having consciously avoided contact with his childhood friend later in life, when the boy he met in Jr. High was now a man who had been in and out of rehab for serious drug addiction. It's a raw admission from a writer still conflicted about his own actions - and inaction - with regard to someone he considered a best friend in high school to a person who scared him enough to even skip his funeral.
These two chapters actually give the other chapters - and the other stories of criminals the writer has never met but has only researched - more resonance, and humanizes even the most horrific of these criminals by reminding us that these people could have been our neighbors, our co-workers, our classmates, or even our friends. Besides the fact that these bite-sized stories about the evil that lurks in the hearts and minds of men (and women) are engrossing and entertaining, these tales also generate our compassion for the criminals and the idea that if they had shared their demons with someone else, perhaps these crimes may have been stopped ... or never committed in the first place. In our current age of social media and oversharing, perhaps there are future crimes against humanity that may be shared and stopped before they even occur. It's our job as good citizens and neighbors to look for the clues from these people out to do harm (and self-harm) and reach out to them before they can destroy themselves or others.
Eric Brach now joins the pantheon of these writers' work with "Double Lives," a compelling and totally readable exploration of why certain people in our very own neighborhoods do the horrible things they do. Spanning the 20th century and into the 21st (in locales from CA to TX to NJ), these individual stories of menace and mayhem track the criminals from their (mostly) humble backgrounds and lower- to middle-class adulthood when the troubles bloomed. Little-known offenders like arsonist John Leonard Orr to famous perpetrators of evil like the BTK killer and child molester/congressman Dennis Hastert are profiled; Brach breaks down their lives, their seeming normalcy, and their horrific crimes - as well as the aftermath and their eventual capture.
In writing about these past crimes - instead of about current, unsolved horrors - the writer has the ability to allay some of the readers' fears of these "next-door" criminals by closing the circuit on them and concluding each chapter with their capture and prison sentences. None of the criminals get away with their crimes, and all are punished and put away so that the public can sleep just a little better knowing they no longer roam our streets our our neighborhoods.
The writer also makes the curious - but ultimately successful - choice of bringing his own personal history into the mix. Brach does this from the very beginning, explaining his interest in the subject of destruction and self-destruction by relating brief stories of the people he knows who have died. In the Introduction, and in two separate chapters, he inserts himself into the book with these stories of loss and addiction. In the two "Evan" chapters, he deals with his struggles of having consciously avoided contact with his childhood friend later in life, when the boy he met in Jr. High was now a man who had been in and out of rehab for serious drug addiction. It's a raw admission from a writer still conflicted about his own actions - and inaction - with regard to someone he considered a best friend in high school to a person who scared him enough to even skip his funeral.
These two chapters actually give the other chapters - and the other stories of criminals the writer has never met but has only researched - more resonance, and humanizes even the most horrific of these criminals by reminding us that these people could have been our neighbors, our co-workers, our classmates, or even our friends. Besides the fact that these bite-sized stories about the evil that lurks in the hearts and minds of men (and women) are engrossing and entertaining, these tales also generate our compassion for the criminals and the idea that if they had shared their demons with someone else, perhaps these crimes may have been stopped ... or never committed in the first place. In our current age of social media and oversharing, perhaps there are future crimes against humanity that may be shared and stopped before they even occur. It's our job as good citizens and neighbors to look for the clues from these people out to do harm (and self-harm) and reach out to them before they can destroy themselves or others.
April 15, 2021
I received a copy of this book in a Goodreads giveaway.
If you're looking for a comprehensive anthology of serial killers and sociopaths, this is probably not the book for you. This is more of a collection of summaries of well-known cases, with some of the author's personal experience peppered in throughout the book. I personally didn't see that the personal anecdotes were necessarily relevant to the book, but that's a minor complaint since it was generally well-written and did a solid job of combining the information with entertainment. I didn't necessarily learn much of anything new, but the format kept me interested and I wasn't disappointed.
If you're looking for a comprehensive anthology of serial killers and sociopaths, this is probably not the book for you. This is more of a collection of summaries of well-known cases, with some of the author's personal experience peppered in throughout the book. I personally didn't see that the personal anecdotes were necessarily relevant to the book, but that's a minor complaint since it was generally well-written and did a solid job of combining the information with entertainment. I didn't necessarily learn much of anything new, but the format kept me interested and I wasn't disappointed.
April 16, 2019
I picked up this book because people and true stories interest me. I appreciate all of the work that went into this project. This is a book that kind of makes you look twice at those around you. The odd hours of neighbors may be more than odd, even criminal.
It was well done and I think Mr. Brach has another story or two that have come to light in recent news that I believe he could do justice.
Wow! Just wow!
It was well done and I think Mr. Brach has another story or two that have come to light in recent news that I believe he could do justice.
Wow! Just wow!
February 12, 2019
Compelling read!!
Eric did a great job of research to answer some of his questions about people living double lives. His quest for answers was thought provoking. His writing style kept me totally engaged. I didn’t want to put the book down! Thanks, Eric, I can’t wait till your next book!!
Eric did a great job of research to answer some of his questions about people living double lives. His quest for answers was thought provoking. His writing style kept me totally engaged. I didn’t want to put the book down! Thanks, Eric, I can’t wait till your next book!!
July 27, 2024
Certainly an interesting premise, and there are some fascinating stories in here. But the writing felt a little out of kilter, neither a technical dissection of the crimes, nor a narrative driven voice over.
It’s a little dry therefore, and didn’t exactly suck me into the journey through the book.
It’s a little dry therefore, and didn’t exactly suck me into the journey through the book.
February 21, 2026
Good little book on some of the most common serial killers who hid their identity. Knew about 80% of the cases already but really enjoyed the summary of the cases & authors real life reflection in relation to people he knew in his life
October 14, 2018
Interesting, fascinating, and has me looking at my neighbors with a curiosity I did not have before.
February 13, 2019
Interesting case studies, poorly written
Quick and interesting read. Too many grammatical errors and the author jumped around a lot. It made the book frustrating to read
Quick and interesting read. Too many grammatical errors and the author jumped around a lot. It made the book frustrating to read
May 21, 2020
A very quick read. It skipped over a lot of detail on the crimes cover.
November 21, 2025
I don't read too much true crime (the last one that I read was 'In Cold Blood' for a college class), but I really enjoyed how many different types of crimes were showcased in this compilation of stories. It's crazy to watch how small-town crime has evolved in a way (as there are many decades included), and it was interesting to read about how things can either quickly escalate or slowly burn. Some of the long-term crimes were actually quite impressive in terms of how they were constructed, and I give the author props for being able to research AND write a complete book in two years.
September 3, 2018
I've always been a fan of Law and Order and Forensic Files and was familiar with a few of the stories that were included in this novel. However, watching those shows, I didn't really get the sense that these criminals were living among us. These highly engaging stories give you a better sense of the psyche of these criminals and the realization that these aren't fictional characters far, far away. These are actually real life friends, family or neighbors who may be living right next door. I also really liked how the author Eric Brach weaved in personal stories about people he knew from childhood who had become criminals later on in life. Overall, this was a very fascinating read, and I would highly recommend it to anyone! I'm looking forward to the next installment.
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews