True Crime

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – to me good books are all about CHARACTER. I don’t care if the characters in question are “sympathetic” or not, I just demand that they be interesting and credible, and nothing proves this literary maxim more than the genre generally considered the least literary, True Crime. In most True Crime there isn’t the standard intermediary of the virtuous detective mediating between the reader and the horrible deed, there’s just the victim, the institutions of justice, and most crucially, the criminal. The hook for True Crime is the inevitable question Who would do a thing like that? In the right hands, the reader can understand the person and their character, the flaws that brought them to cross the line, and, while not condoning it, can even begin to be able to conceive of the unthinkable. Ann “Golden” Rule is the ruler and yardstick of this world, and it was really her encounter with Ted Bundy, a man she called friend until she learned he was a serial killer, that gave her the insight to elevate a True Confessions type scribbler into the triumphant author of the ground breaking The Stranger Beside Me and from there to a string of excellent and best selling True Crime, the latest of which, Too Late to Say Goodbye: A True Story of Murder and Betrayal, is hitting the stores just as you read this. It’s the realization that even worst monsters are fellow humans that gives the best of contemporary True Crime its depth and fascination. read more

There’s something about decapitation that has a primal effect, abhorrent yet inescapably fascinating, possessing an atavistic kick. Although removing a fellow human’s head and displaying it as an object is an act, like cannibalism and incest, that most of us would prefer not to think about, anthropology testifies that there are certainly contemporary tribes of “head-hunters” or even “head-shrinkers,” who still indulge in such behavior, and it’s disingenuous to believe that our ancestors didn’t take part in similar ritual activity. read more

“Butterflies are sensitive indicators as to the overall health of the environment. They’re the above ground equivalent of canaries in the coal mine.”

Technically, this isn’t a true crime book, as the crimes perpetrated are against butterflies, but the point Speart makes clear in her compulsively readable book is that crimes against wildlife are indeed a serious matter. A well researched, very inside look at the world of butterfly collecting and smuggling, Speart even supplies the reader with both a hero, Fish & Wildlife newbie Ed Newcomer, and a villain, Japanese butterfly smuggler Yoshi Kojima. Her threads are obsession; the virtual futility facing Wildlife enforcement officers, who are understaffed and whose punishments have little teeth; and the point that even the extinction of a butterfly causes an environmental ripple that affects us all. While the interactions between Ed and Yoshi take on the structure of an elaborate game, the stakes are high. read more

The femme fatale is a stock figure in our culture, enough of a cliche that a culture luminary like Britney Spears pasted the phrase on her latest piece of product. Some feminist scholars maintain that the concept itself is nothing but a social construct, the result of fin de siecle anxieties about the emancipation of women. I invite any savant who thinks that femme fatales are imaginary bogeywomen to make the acquaintance of Sarah Pender, the central figure of Steve Miller’s riveting new true crime book Girl, Wanted: The Chase For Sarah Pender – it’s a lot easier than learning the truth at the wrong end of a shot gun. read more