Dead Wake by Erik Larson

Although this telling of the last voyage of the Lusitania lacks the gruesome criminal parallel story Larson often includes, there is intrigue and terror enough. It took only 20 minutes for the ship to sink and so many of the safety features designed to avoid a repeat of the Titanic disaster failed again.  But this is as much about the German U-boats and their effect on the fighting in WWI as it is about one ship.  The Lusitania was lost in 1915.  The United States didn't enter the war until two years later.  But it is the failed security and the idea that this new way of war would sacrifice women and children as well as seasoned soldiers that forever connects the two disasters.