Points: 0
On Crime Storytelling and Why Aiming for Closure Can Be Problematic
I have been an avid consumer of true crime for decades now. Before podcasts, I watched the Paradise Lost documentaries, Dateline NBC (a favorite, because of Keith Morrison's purple prose and swooning affect, not to mention the hardboiled charm of Josh Mankiewicz), 20/20, and Cold Case Files and Wicked Attraction, et cetera ad infinitum. As a child, my family watched Rescue 911, Unsolved Mysteries, and Cops, shows that featured people in distress and unexplained disappearances-even as I wasn't allowed to watch Beverly Hills 90210 because the teens were promiscuous and sassy.
I have often wondered-and been asked-what it is about true crime that keeps me coming back to the well again and again. I used to joke that I was gathering material, that as a writer, surely this counted as research for whatever I was working on.
Only now do I see that that isn't a joke; it's true.
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'Every man who knows how to read has it in his power to magnify himself, to multiply the ways in which he exists, the make his life full, significant and interesting.'