1st Edition

True Crime and Women Writers, Readers, and Representations

Edited By Lili Pâquet, Rosemary Williamson Copyright 2025
188 Pages 2 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

188 Pages 2 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

188 Pages 2 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

Bringing new research from true crime writers, scholars, and media practitioners around the world, this book offers fresh perspectives on how women read, write, and are portrayed in true crime stories across different platforms, including documentaries, podcasts, and TikToks. The genre of true crime is flourishing, and it is overwhelmingly consumed by women. Despite this, there is much we do... Read more

Chapter 1: True Crime and Women: New Perspectives

Lili Pâquet and Rosemary Williamson

Chapter 2: Saving Grace: Mediating Victorian True Crime in the Age of #MeToo

Jennifer McDonell

Chapter 3: True Crime through a Feminist Identity Lens

Bruce Baer Arnold

Chapter 4: Women’s Magazines, Crime, and Justice: Invitational Rhetoric in a Decade of True Crime in Australian Women’s Weekly

Lili Pâquet and Rosemary Williamson

Chapter 5: Gendered Constructions of Deviance: Women as Perpetrators of Violent Crime in Finnish Tabloid Press

Satu Venäläinen

Chapter 6: Toward an Equitable True Crime? What Black and Missing and Murdered and Missing in Montana Reveal about the Media Portrayal of Missing Black and Indigenous Women and Girls

Danielle Slakoff, Stacie Merken, Lauren Moton, and Sheena L. Gilbert

Chapter 7: Are True Crime Podcasts Feminist? What a Content Analysis of the Most-Listened-To True Crime Podcasts Tells Us

Kathleen Rodgers

Chapter 8: Through the Mirror: Proximity and Subjectivity in Writing Larrimah

Caroline Graham and Kylie Stevenson

Chapter 9: Solicited Diary Methods and Women’s Experiences of True Crime Podcast Listening: Exploring Methodological Questions

Laura Vitis

Chapter 10: True Crime Activism on TikTok: It’s Not All R@p!s+$, M!rd3r3r$ and Ki!!3r$

Simon Hobbs and Megan Hoffman

Biography

Lili Pâquet is a Senior Lecturer in Writing at the University of New England, Australia, with research interests in crime fiction, true crime, and rhetoric. Her research has been published in journals including Rhetoric Society Quarterly, Crime Media Culture, Computers and Composition, New Writing, and Journal of Popular Culture, and her monograph, Crime Fiction from a Professional Eye: Women Writers with Law Enforcement and Justice Experience, was published in 2018.

Rosemary (Rose) Williamson is Associate Professor in Writing and Head of the Department of Creative Arts and Communication at the University of New England, Australia, and an honorary member of the Humanities Research Centre, Australian National University. She conducts research on Australian magazines and the rhetorical dimensions of magazine feature articles, including those on true crime, in popular women’s magazines. Her research interests also include life writing, environmental rhetoric, and political rhetoric. Her research has been published in New Writing, Journalism Studies, Life Writing, Media History, and elsewhere.