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For other uses of "True Crime", please see True Crime (disambiguation)

True crime is a non-fiction genre in which the author uses an actual crime and real people as a point of departure. The crimes almost always include murder. They can be fairly factual or highly speculative and heavily fictionalized depending on the writer. Some works are "instant books" produced quickly to capitalize on popular demand while others may reflect years of thoughtful research and inquiry. Still others revisit historic crimes (or alleged crimes) and propose solutions, such as books examining political assassinations, well-known unsolved murders, or deaths of celebrities.

According to Joyce Carol Oates:

Accounts of true crime have always been enormously popular among readers. The subgenre would seem to appeal to the highly educated as well as the barely educated, to women and men equally. The most famous chronicler of true crime trials in English history is the amateur criminologist William Roughead, a Scots lawyer who between 1889 and 1949 attended every murder trial of significance held in the High Court of Justiciary in Edinburgh, and wrote of them in essays published first in such journals as The Juridical Review and subsequently collected in best-selling books with such titles as Malice Domestic, The Evil That Men Do, What Is Your Verdict?, In Queer Street, Rogues Walk Here, Knave's Looking Glass, Mainly Murder, Murder and More Murder, Nothing But Murder, and many more…. Roughead's influence was enormous, and since his time "true crime" has become a crowded, flourishing field, though few writers of distinction have been drawn to it. ^[1]

The works of author Yseult Bridges about British cases; Inspector Dew's I Caught Crippen (1938); and the Notable British Trials series were all works that can be regarded as true crime. Jack Webb's 1958 The Badge (recently republished with an introduction by James Ellroy) embodies elements of the modern true crime story, but Truman Capote's "non-fiction novel" In Cold Blood (1965) is usually credited with establishing the modern novelistic style of the genre.

Many works in this genre explore (and sometimes exploit) high-profile, sensational crimes such as the JonBenét Ramsey killing, the O.J. Simpson case, and the Pamela Smart murder, while others are devoted to more obscure slayings. Prominent true crime accounts include Helter Skelter by lead Manson family prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi and Curt Gentry; Ann Rule's The Stranger Beside Me, about Ted Bundy, and Joe McGinniss' Fatal Vision.

The modern genre, which most often focuses on murders, is frequently marked by biographical treatment of the criminals and victims, attempts to explain criminal psychology, and descriptions of police investigations and trial procedures.

Although true crime books often center on sensational, shocking, or strange events, a secondary part of their appeal is social realism that describes events too mundane, risqué or deviant for other non-fiction media, including descriptions of the lifestyles of working-class or socially marginal people.^{[original research?]}

After the success of the movie The Silence of the Lambs, a subgenre of true crime has focused on methods of "profiling" of unidentified criminals, especially serial killers.

• Edmund Pearson
• Category:Non-fiction crime books
  
• Category:Non-fiction crime writers
  
• Category:American non-fiction crime writers
  

1. ^ Oates, Joyce Carol (1999), “The Mystery of JonBenét Ramsey”, The New York Review of Books, Vol. 46, No. 11, 24 June 1999.

• Capote, Truman, In Cold Blood ; Vintage; ISBN 0-679-74558-0 (paperback reprint, 1994)
• Casey, Kathryn, She Wanted It All ; HarperCollins/Avon; ISBN0-06-056764-3 (paperback reprint, 2005)
• Geis, Gilbert and Leigh B. Bienen (1998), Crimes of the Century: From Leopold and Loeb to O.J. Simpson, Northeastern University Press.
• Moore, Kelly, Deadly Medicine. St. Martin's Press; (reprint, 1989)
• Olsen, Gregg, Starvation Heights, Three Rivers Press 978-1400097463 (reprint 2005)
• Wambaugh, Joseph, The Onion Field ; Dell Publishing; ISBN 99944-3-768-2 (paperback reprint,1984)
• Webb, Jack, The Badge: The Inside Story of One of America's Great Police Departments ; Prentice-Hall; (hardback, 1958)
• Whittington-Egan, Richard, Editor (1991), William Roughead's Chronicles of Murder, Moffat, Scotland: Lochar.