When I was in graduate school -- pursuing an MA and later a PhD in English -- I often “hid” the true crime books that I tended to read when not focused on my research. I had a pile of Ann Rule paperbacks and hid them in the back of a bookshelf, afraid that someone might see them and think I was one of “those” people. You know, the kind who like to read murder books.
Well, I guess I sort of am one of those people. Anyone who knows me now is aware that there is nothing I like better than a true crime documentary or a true crime podcast. In fact, this isn’t even something that I hide anymore, partly because it seems like “everyone” loves a good true crime story nowadays. So a couple of weeks ago when I was browsing the shelves at the amazing Novel Neighbor, a local independent bookshop, I was so excited when I saw a graphic novel by Hilary Fitzgerald Campbell, Murder Book: A Graphic Memoir of a True Crime Obsession.
I knew this book was meant for me early in the reading when Campbell nonchalantly drops in the fact that her grandmother’s brother was none other than F. Scott Fitzgerald himself (Annabel Fitzgerald)! So -- if I stretch it a little -- this is a “literary read,” right?!
Campbell’s humor is evident from the first pages and I love the style of her drawings (see above and below!). She creates a premise for the book like she is getting ready to teach a course on true crime (a class I would take for sure!):
Like Campbell, I sometimes thought that *this* could have been me possibly (being murdered by your boyfriend). I had this same hair and the exact same shirt as Anne Marie did in the photograph above. Maybe, as Campbell claims, this is a reason why these stories stick with us sometimes? What if I got involved with the wrong guy? Or made an innocent decision that eventually resulted in my death? As a single woman for a lot of years, questions like this can keep you up at night.
I like true crime, I think, because of the psychology. In fact, I don’t like true crime documentaries or films with lots of blood. I don’t need to “see” what happened. Instead, I want to know “why” it happened and “how” it happened. I hope that this sort of content makes me more empathetic to people, more understanding of how we work as human beings. Even when it comes to visiting history museums around the world, I want to read about the “people” and how they lived and worked, not so much about the big political events happening around us.
And now that I am older, I think I recognize that there is an element of storytelling in true crime that attracts me to it, just like any other piece of literature.
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