Maureen Boyle Books In Order

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Maureen Boyle is an award-winning journalist-turned true crime writer whose books go behind the headlines to paint vivid portraits of victims, their families and the grueling work of the investigators sorting through endless clues to bring killers to justice.

She first started working at newspapers in her hometown of Bridgeport, Connecticut just out of high school and through college before moving to papers in New Hampshire and Massachusetts. She has received numerous accolades nationally and regionally over the years for her work, including being named Journalist of the Year in New England.

She eventually left daily journalism to become the director of the journalism program at Stonehill College in Easton, Massachusetts, a distinguished school in New England, where she teaches a wide range of courses, including narrative writing.

Her true-crime books, written in narrative form, have been praised as “gripping” by Jerry Penacoli, the former host of Extra and “meticulous” by Pulitzer Prize winner Irene Virag.

While working at the daily newspaper in New Bedford, Massachusetts, she was the first reporter to see a link between the disappearances of women in that city and bodies found along nearby highways. That haunting case, which she still follows today, is the focus of her first book, Shallow Graves: The Hunt for the New Bedford Highway Serial Killer published in 2017.

Shallow Graves: The Hunt for the New Bedford Highway Serial Killer

2017 ForeEdge

Eleven women went missing off the streets of New Bedford, Massachusetts in 1988, the largest fishing port in the country at the time. Nine were eventually found along highways circling the historic city and two remain missing. Shallow Graves shines a light on the victims, the families they left behind and the struggles investigators faced trying to bring them all justice.

The Ghost: The Murder of Police Chief Greg Adams and the Hunt for His Killer.

2021 Black Lyon Publishing

Shortly before Christmas in the small borough of Saxonburg in Western Pennsylvania, Police Chief Greg Adams pulled over a car just blocks from the police station. Minutes later, he was fatally shot and the killer sped from town. Investigators quickly identified the killer as Donald Webb, a small-town mobster from Massachusetts who was scoping out a local business to rob but finding him proved to be far tougher. The Ghost follows the decades long effort to find Webb, who eventually was placed on the FBI’s Most Wanted list, and the shocking conclusion to the case.

Child Last Seen: The Disappearance of Patty Desmond.

2023 Black Lyon Publishing

Fifteen-year-old Patty Desmond slipped out of her family’s home in Western Pennsylvania one December night in 1965. An older, married man with a criminal past appeared to be the last to see her but he claimed he dropped her off near a friend’s house. As the decades passed, investigators were increasingly convinced he held the key to what happened to the teen but could they prove it?

(Thank you to Maureen for this bio!)