A collection of short stories about fraud titled The Book of Swindles was published in China during the Ming dynasty [1368-1644]. And Shakespeare himself is considered by some to be the father of true crime [Arden of Feversham, 1552]. Fast-forwarding a couple hundred years, in the early mid-20th century, pulp-fiction novels and magazines like True Detective catered to crime buffs. [The Lindbergh kidnapping case captivated millions from 1932 to 1936.] The 1980s and '90s saw the rise of headline-inspired made-for-TV movies and media outlets like Court TV. (It's estimated that 57 percent of the country tuned in to watch the O.J. Simpson verdict in 1995, and that says nothing of how the media turned people like Amy Fisher and the Menendz brothers into household names around the time.) It's in our nature to love true crime. The current true crime boom is most easily traced to the 15-month stretch across 2014-2015 that saw the debuts of the podcast serial, HBO's "The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst" and Netflix's "Making a Murderer."
Justine Sayles, "The Bloody Bubble," The Ringer, July 9, 2021
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