"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. John J. Lennon entered the New York prison system with a sentence of twenty-eight years to life, but after he stepped into a writing workshop at Attica Correctional Facility, his whole life changed. Reporting from the cellblock 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. The men have completely different backgrounds--Robert Chambers, a preppy Manhattanite turned true crime celebrity; Milton E. Jones, a burglar coaxed 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 the story of his own journey 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 four lives: 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?"--