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What’s the deal with True Crime? That’s the question we recently asked ourselves over on Book Riot’s mystery and thriller podcast, Read or Dead. My cohost, Katie McLain Horner, and I took an episode to read some recent(ish) titles about true crime and how the genre is evolving. For far too long, true crime has thrived on our obsession with these violent acts. We can’t look away, mesmerized by someone else’s worst day of their lives.
But in the last decade, more and more voices are speaking out against our culture’s voyeuristic treatment of violence towards women and girls. They ask big questions like, what are the ethics behind consuming this content? Who is allowed to tell the story of these crimes? And whose stories AREN’T being told?
The books below answer these questions and more.
Dead Girls: Essays on Surviving American Culture by Alice Bolin
Why are we so obsessed with dead girls? When I first read Dead Girls, a light bulb went off in my brain. She says, “It’s clear we love the Dead Girl, enough to rehash and reproduce her story, to kill her again and again, but not enough to see a pattern. She is always singular, an anomaly, the juicy new mystery.” I had never connected the dots before. Many true crime stories repackage these tragedies as entertainment. But these true crime stories are people’s very real tragedies, not cheap content for people to consume. Bolin tackles these ideas from different angles, outlining her ideas with precision.
Creep: Accusations and Confessions by Myriam Gurba
Who gets to tell a survivor’s story? For Myriam Gurba, this question is personal. As a survivor of sexual assault and long-time abuse from a partner, Gurba experienced the crimes that true crime obsessives become fixated on. Gurba delves into what it’s like to find yourself in this sort of narrative and the harsh realities of living in it. But she isn’t going to hand her story over to anyone else. This is HER story. And she is going to tell as little or as much of it as she wants. Gurba’s top-tier cultural criticism makes Creep a must-read.
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Unspeakable Acts: True Tales of Crime, Murder, Deceit, and Obsession by Sarah Weinman
Can someone cover a true crime story without it being exploitative? What would that kind of journalism look like? Weinman edited Unspeakable Acts to showcase a new generation of true crime writers who handle their topics with care and consideration. These writers aren’t exploitative. They center the victims’ stories and celebrate their lives. All of these stories tackle true crime from a different angle. In one essay, a conman is taken down by the very women he stole from. There’s a piece about a missing trans woman and the abysmal response from the authorities when her family reported her missing. In another essay, we get a deep dive into the life of Gypsy Rose Blanchard and her parasocial following that insisted that they knew what “really” happened.
You can find me over on my substack Winchester Ave, over on Instagram @kdwinchester, or on my podcast Read Appalachia. As always, feel free to drop me a line at [emailprotected]. For even MORE bookish content, you can find my articles over on Book Riot.