Considering True Crime through academic and popular perspectives with reviews, interviews and more.
Katherine Dykstra’s What Happened to Paula: On the Death of an American Girl (Norton 2021) is a thoroughly researched and deeply personal account of a woman’s investigation into the death of a midwestern American teenager. It also discusses the through lines that Paula’s victimization has with women’s lives across time, including the author’s own. Late …
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The Case of the Murderous Dr. Cream: The Hunt for a Victorian Era Serial Killer (Harper Collins, 2021) by Dean Jobb is an excellent and comprehensive historical true crime narrative that integrates the crimes of one man into a social, political, and cultural context. Historically rich and shockingly poignant, Jobb’s text is not one to …
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Sometimes all we really want to read is a really good story. Crime Time: Twenty True Tales of Murder, Madness and Mayhem (Lyons Press, 2021) by J. North Conway offers just that in spades. Gathering together some of the most prolific and little-known stories of violence, robbery, and murder, Conway’s text is a fun anthology …
“Stephen Jackley had, like many young people, looked around and concluded that the world was not fair. And like many young people, he’d wanted to make a difference. It’s just that, rather than going on protest marches, involving himself in politics, or running sponsored marathons, Stephen ended up robbing banks.” In the later parts of …
As true crime enjoys a recent surge in popularity, we have learned that the most compelling stories, and the most worthwhile ones, are told firsthand. Whether it is victims writing their true stories of trauma, or first responders recounting the harrowing details of a case, true crime readers tend to clamour for the authentic narrative …
Even the most tragically familiar stories can devolve into shocking and unbelievable true crime cases. Part true crime narrative and part courtroom drama, At Any Cost: A Father’s Betrayal, A Wife’s Murder, and a Ten-Year War for Justice by Rebecca Rosenberg and Selim Algar (2021 St. Martin’s Press), recounts the worst results of domestic violence …
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My favorite nonfiction texts are those that place narratives about individuals in larger sociological contexts, because they draw the reader in on a human level and allow them to connect with larger-than-life stories. Not only does no other work of true crime do that better than The Devil in The White City: Murder, Magic, and …
Elon Green’s Last Call: A True Story of Love, Lust, and Murder in Queer New York (Celadon Books 2021) has three central avenues of exploration: a queer history of the United States and New York City in the 1980s and 90s, a history of the AIDS crisis and its massively devastating effect on the queer …
Angela Bourke’s The Burning of Bridget Cleary: A True Story (1999) chronicles the far from ordinary murder case of Bridget Cleary in rural County Tipperary, Ireland in March 1895. Gruesomely murdered by immolation on her own hearth by her husband, Michael Cleary, who, along with many of Bridget’s relatives and friends were present when she …
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The degree to which crime stories saturate our cultural (re)productions, especially in North America, is alternately fascinating and troubling. As writers and directors adapt from real-life tragedy, what do their films lose or gain in eliciting fear and revulsion in their viewers? What are the ethics of this complex process? Christopher Berry-Dee’s Serial Killers at …
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