![]() John Darnielle’s third novel, most of which is narrated by a bestselling author of true crime books called Gage Chandler, confronts the moral ambiguity of the trade head-on. ![]() Several of the genre’s practitioners have defended it very eloquently against charges of being insensitive or exploitative, although their arguments sometimes seem to me eerily reminiscent of those that Thomas De Quincey laughed out of court back in 1827 in his ironical essay “On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts”. The “true crime” genre, formerly beneath the notice of the chattering classes except for the odd highbrow specimen such as Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, has recently taken pride of place in the cultural mainstream, largely thanks to a run of glossy documentaries and podcasts that have made prurient interest in lurid murders seem respectable by applying a veneer of sociological or psychological inquiry. ![]()
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