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Jun 14, 2021 · Edmund Pearson wrote one of the first true crime books, “Studies in Murder,” in 1924. It included an essay on Lizzie Borden. Four decades later came a true crime revolution. “In Cold Blood” was, famously, a “non-fiction novel.” Before Truman Capote’s book was published in 1966, some might have wondered what that term meant.
The first true crime magazine, True Detective, was published in 1924. It featured fairly matter-of-fact accounts of crimes and how they were solved. During the genre's heyday, before WWII, 200 different true crime magazines were sold on newsstands, with six million magazines sold every month.
- True Crime’S 16th Century Origins
- Literary Crime in The 19th Century
- The Rise of Detective and True Crime Mysteries
Between 1550 and 1700, British authors and printers produced an unprecedented number of publications that reported on capital crimes. As literacy rates expanded and new print technologies emerged, topical leaflets began to circulate among newly literate and semiliterate consumers. Hundreds of crime pamphlets—short, unbound books of roughly six to 2...
Sensationalist broadsides and pamphlets continued to circulate in England and the U.S. throughout the 19th century, even as the penny press introduced widespread crime journalism. As was true in earlier centuries, graphic and domestic murders dominated news coverage, but a new trend in crime writing also emerged. Reputable authors became increasing...
When the Ratcliffe Highway murders took place in 1811, London, like every city in Europe and North America, lacked a formal police department. It wasn’t until 1829 that the first centrally organized force, the Metropolitan Police, was established. Perhaps not coincidentally, that same year, François Vidocq, a French criminal-turned-investigator, pu...
- Party Monster: A Fabulous But True Tale of Murder in Clubland (Formerly Disco Bloodbath) by James St. James. James St. James’s memoir relives his days as a club kid in the 1990s, and how that led him to become the close confidant of Michael Alig, a man convicted of killing a drug dealer known as Angel in 1996.
- In Cold Blood by Truman Capote. In 1959, four members of the Clutter family, who owned a farm in Kansas, were shot to death in their home. In Cold Blood weaves together the stories of the murderers and the investigators hunting them with interviews with those who knew the victims and the killers.
- My Dark Places by James Ellroy. When James Ellroy was 10 years old, his mother was murdered. Although at the time he wouldn’t even admit to liking his mother, the murder weighed heavily on his mind — eventually leading him to drug and alcohol abuse that served as an escape from the pressing need to know who his mother really was.
- The Stranger Beside Me by Ann Rule. In the 1970s, aspiring crime novelist Ann Rule worked at a suicide hotline with Ted Bundy — a man she would soon consider a friend.
- Reedsy
- In Cold Blood by Truman Capote. Buy on Amazon. Arguably the book that launched the genre as we know it, Capote’s career-defining work begins with a shocking quadruple homicide in a quiet Kansas town.
- Helter Skelter by Vincent Bugliosi. Buy on Amazon. The Manson family murders were some of the most sensationalized killings of the 21st century. But how many of the rumors around them actually stemmed from reality?
- The Executioner’s Song by Norman Mailer. Buy on Amazon. Another dramatic murder case takes center stage in the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Executioner’s Song.
- The Stranger Beside Me by Ann Rule. Buy on Amazon. We wouldn’t leave the twisted tale of Ted Bundy off this list, and as a dedicated writer and one of Bundy’s closest friends, Ann Rule is uniquely qualified to tell it.
Sep 12, 2023 · This chapter considers the origins of True Crime and forms a timeline of its development through to contemporary media outlets. This begins with a discussion of murder ballads, through to the establishment of broadside ballads, broadsheets, and Newgate Novels.
Nov 29, 2021 · Truman Capote fathered the true crime genre with the 1965 publication of In Cold Blood, considered a masterpiece and one of the best true crime books of all time. The story reads like a novel...
