True Crime Fiction Menu: Virgo Season 2024 Edition
What I've been consuming lately in the true crime and crime fiction universes
First off a quick program note: TCF will be on hiatus next week as Sunday is my birthday, and in addition to consuming true crime content I will be spending the weekend avoiding all responsibilities and consuming carbs and sugar!
I’ve drunk my first pumpkin spice coffee of the season, so for me, Fall, aka, my favorite season, has officially begun. Since my school commute is back in full swing, I’ve been able to catch up on some listening and reading as my ferry boat meanders down the East River, and there have been a few texts that have really captured my attention.
Give it a listen!
I’ve finally started season 3 of In the Dark, and it is a fascinating, infuriating, and heartbreaking piece of investigative reporting. Host Madeleine Baran and her team of producers dig into the 2005 massacre of civilians in Haditha, Iraq, by a small group of U.S. Marines. The careful, nuanced reporting is exactly what one has come to expect from this series. The title of the podcast has evolved along with its content over three seasons to first indicate the circumstances of an unsolved kidnapping, then the nefarious and obscured illegal prosecution of a murder case, to now the way a war crime was quietly and efficiently swept under the rug by American officials. It’s an interesting bit of thematic rhyming that two of the foundational audio properties in modern true crime—Serial and In the Dark—have dedicated their latest seasons to institutional malfeasance by the U.S. military-industrial complex.
As of this writing, I’ve listened to the first two episodes of Empire City, and I can’t wait for more. The podcast’s subtitle, “The Untold Origin Story of the NYPD,” lets you know that it will be firmly in the “past is prologue” style of historical reporting. And any project from host Chenjerai Kumanyika is a must-listen as far as I’m concerned! I got hooked on his erudite and conversational narrative style with the late, great Uncivil, a compelling episodic series on the Civil War.
Friend of the ‘stack
has recommended The True Crime Podcast Podcast, and I can’t wait to give this meta-analysis of audio true-crime storytelling a binge. Related: I’m working on a chapter on the counterhistory of 20th-century American true crime, and my editors recommended I check out The New True Crime: How the Rise of Serialized Storytelling Is Transforming Innocence, and I’m so glad they did! Diana Rickard (who, fun fact, I discovered is a colleague of mine at CUNY) looks at several recent true crime properties that engage with their audiences through the lens of wrongful conviction, and I’ve found it to be an invaluable resource and addition to contemporary true-crime scholarship.Give it a read!
Madeline Ullrich interrogates two recent texts, a film that I’m dying to see and a buzzy true-crime docuseries, as problematic representations of the “children’s television” genre. She argues that both I Saw the TV Glow and Quiet on Set “reveal the limits of the childhood innocence myth.” It’s really smart and engaging analysis.
cw: this article discusses suicide
This Guardian piece on true-crime producer John Balson tries to explore the complicated and tragic illness and death of a London based freelancer in a sensitive and subtle way, looking at ethical issues not only of true crime, but also of freelance/hustle economies that reward endless productivity and punish rest financially and emotionally. A tough read, but an important one.
For something a little lighter but just as smart, this New York Review piece on Columbo and his successors is excellent. The title is “An Ass-Backwards Sherlock Holmes,” and if that doesn’t appeal to you, well, you probably don’t enjoy my newsletter much!
This just in! Rebecca Nagle, host of one of my favorite pods This Land, has a book out: By the Fire We Carry: The Generations-Long Fight for Justice on Native Land. The excerpt here on LitHub, “How a Small Town Murder in Oklahoma Sparked a Supreme Court Battle Over Tribal Sovereignty,” is just as gripping and illuminating as it sounds!
Give it a ‘stack!
In lieu of Crime Fiction Corner and my streaming recco for this edition, I’m going to send you to straight to
’s Only Murders in the Inbox. Her newsletter is an unfailingly entertaining and insightful read on tropes, trends, and themes in televised, filmed, and written crime and mystery fiction. And as you can probably tell from her title, she’s got you on this season’s Only Murders in the Building, which I am ashamed to say I haven’t started yet, for the simple reason that reactivating Hulu is beyond my executive functioning capacities at the moment. In addition to her posts on this new classic, I’m going to point you to one of my favorite recent essays from Reda on Black detectives in crime fiction. Enjoy, and see you in a couple of weeks!
Happy birthday Tracy!
Thanks for including my reccomendation and for all the great entries in this menu. Can't wait to gorge!