This book explores contemporary American true crime narratives across various media formats. It dissects the popularity of true crime and the effects, both positive and negative, this popularity has on perceptions of crime and the justice system in contemporary America.
As a collection of new scholarship on the development, scope, and character of true crime in twenty-first century American media, analyses stretch across film, streaming/broadcast TV, podcasts, and novels to explore the variety of ways true crime pervades modern culture. The reader is guided through a series of interconnected topics, starting with an examination of the contemporary success of true crime, the platforms involved, the narrative structures and engagement with audiences, moving on to debates on representation and the ethics involved in portraying both victims and perpetrators of crime within the genre.
This collection provides new critical work on American true crime media for all interested readers, and especially scholars and students in the humanities and social sciences. It offers a significant area of research in social sciences, criminology, media, and English Literature academic disciplines.
Notes on Contributors
Acknowledgements
Introduction
George S. Larke-Walsh
Beyond Entertainment: Podcasting and the Criminal Justice Reform "Niche"
Lindsey Sherrill
Chasing the Truth: Making a Murderer, Historical Narrativity and the Global Netflix Event
Caitlin Shaw
True Crime Adaptations and the Many Faces of the Atlanta Monster
Kyle A. Hammonds
True Crime, True Representation? Race and Injustice Narratives in Wrongful Conviction Podcasts
Robin Blom, Gabriel B. Tait, Gwyn Hultquist, Ida S. Cage, and Melodie K. Griffin
Unresolved - Narrative Strategies in an Unsolved True Crime: Depictions of the JonBenét Ramsey Killing
Elayne Chaplin and Melissa Chaplin
Breaking Silences, or Perpetuating Myths: Images of Mafia Violence in True Crime Documentary
George S. Larke-Walsh and Blake J. Wahlert
‘Exquisitely Criminal Production Music’: Television, Ethics and the Sound of True Crime
Toby Huelin
Barthes's "Grand Project" and the Negative Capability of Contemporary True Crime: On Errol Morris’s A Wilderness of Error
Michael Buozis
My Friend Dahmer: A Graphic‐Narrative Search for the Origins of Evil
Jesús Jiménez-Varea
Forensic Fandom: True Crime, Citizen Investigation and Social Media
Bethan Jones
"What Else Can I Add?": Inverting the Narrative through Female Perspectives in Falling for A Killer, My Favorite Murder, and Murder, Mystery & MakeUp.
Stella Marie Gaynor
Biography
George S. Larke-Walsh is a Full-Time Lecturer at the University of Sunderland, UK.
