As a television news producer for WBZ-TV, Sherman led a high-profile re-investigation of his aunt's murder, which he later chronicled in his 2003 book, A Rose for Mary: The Hunt for the Real Boston Strangler.

The latter, about the city's response to the Boston Marathon bombing, was adapted as a feature dramatic film, Patriots Day (2016), starring Mark Wahlberg, Nina Dobrev, Jake Picking, Candice King, Alyssa Diaz, Kat Graham, James Harvey Ward, Stephen Amell, Paul Wesley and Alex Mckenna directed by Peter Berg.

Both books are now in development as major motion pictures, as is Sherman's 2013 true crime drama, Animal: The Bloody Rise and Fall of the Mob's Most Feared Assassin with 20th Century FOX.

In 2022, Sherman wrote the best-selling true crime thriller Helltown: The Untold Story of A Serial Killer on Cape Cod, chronicling the Tony Costa murders.

In 2018, Sherman led an expedition to Devon, England, to locate a blood relative of pirate captain Samuel Bellamy and obtain their DNA for comparison to a human bone discovered in the shipwreck by Barry Clifford.