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What Does the True-Crime Writer Owe to the Living?
As the author of what you might call “fake-crime” stories (i.e., murder mysteries), I know better than most the universal appeal of violence, literary and otherwise. There’s a frisson attached to the danger, to the horror; a sort of schadenfreude that someone else died, not me; and of course the kind of voyeurism that keeps people rooted to accident scenes until the last ambulance has departed. It’s part of the human condition.
True crime adds a layer onto all that, in the sense that one cannot help but think, at some level, “that could have been me.” The more random the crime, the more we’re inclined to make sure our doors are locked and our urban pathways well-lit.
And evil does hold fascination. Who hasn’t had their curiosity piqued by accounts of Charles Manson, Jeffrey Dahmer, the Zodiac Killer? Perhaps we’re looking to understand how some brains misfire. Perhaps we’re only quenching our own vicarious need for violence — after all, up until the 19th century, people could buy tickets to public hangings. Whatever the reason, true crime as a genre is alive — forgive the pun — and well, and likely to be for some time. And there will always be writers willing to exploit it.
Often it’s the narrowest of pretexts. “I lived upstairs from a monster!” “I grew up down the street from a murderer.” “My father used…
