Culture
On Crime and Its Discontents
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The first crime was the most defining moment in the history of the human. It was not Cain’s murder. That was defining too. But the first crime began in…
When True Crime Meets Police Brutality
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In 2016, journalist Amelia McDonell-Parry and I were asked to look into the death of Freddie Gray for the Undisclosed podcast, a series that focused on wrongful convictions. Gray…
The Girl and the Faun: Eden Phillpotts, His Crime Fiction and His Strange Relationship with His Daughter Adelaide
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“No biography or autobiography is true, because no one in his senses tells the truth about himself….Whoever wants to know me can find me in my work.” –Eden Phillpotts…
The Gilded Age: On Invention and Excess
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“We don’t have a choice in the matter, Mr. McAllistar, we must go where history takes us.” In the HBO Gilded Age series, these were Bertha Russell’s brave words…
Dorothy L Sayers and the Thirty-Foot Drain: Searching for Peter Wimsey
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Dorothy L Sayers was my gateway author to the world of crime fiction. I’d read the Sherlock Holmes stories earlier on, but that superlatively singular creation of Arthur Conan…
From Punchline to Protagonist: Black Horror and the Monsters Who Hunt
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There’s something fascinating about horror. The darkness that hides darker monsters. The creaks and gore and jump scares. The jokes. The unearthing of fears. Whenever I’m in the mood…
The Secret History‘s tragic flaw? Those Kids Are No Fun
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I recently reread Donna Tartt’s Dark Academia classic The Secret History—published 30 years ago this month—for the first time since I was a young identity-less Classics student myself. On…
Texas: Home to Bizarre True Crimes (And So Many Serial Killers)
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True crime writers hold the state of Texas in special regard, not so much for the volume, or even variety, of newsworthy crimes committed there, but for the often…
Phonies: J.D. Salinger and Wielding Copyright as Self-Protection
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After J.D. Salinger published his story “Hapworth 16, 1924” in The New Yorker in 1965, he decided to stop publishing his works. Although he had resigned from his nearly…