True Crime Round Up

Americans don't trust Fiction anymore. We now know that our hearts just aren't into it. Sitcoms and Soap Operas are losing their places to high budget Game Shows and low budgets Daytime Talk. And while Oprah may have started this ball rolling, it was O.J. who ran with it. After the Waco Siege/Burning, the LA Riots/Burning and "The Trial of the Century I & II," America tuned back to various forms of Fiction and said "Who the hell cares?" Then came Monica Lewinsky to drive the nails into the coffin. If none of this seems like a change, think back to when America cared about who shot JR.

Recently when Fox was forced to abandon it's so-called "reality" programming (i.e. "When Good Pets Go Bad") because of the super blowout over "Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire," some culture watchers may have thought that American culture could be drifting back to "unreality" programming, or (how you say) Fiction. No, the Fox declaration, however untrue, is just a blip in an otherwise constant acceleration away from Mr. Roger's world of make-believe. While the part of America who can read used to flip when each new Scott Turow, Stevie King and John Irving book came out, two of the most recent über best sellers, Sebastian Junger's The Perfect Storm and Jon Krakaurer's Into Thin Air, were non-fiction; even Angela's Ashes is non-fiction. Forced
to look for these books in stores previously devoted to Fiction, readers have been stumbling over new sections devoted to True Crime.

True Crime, the bastard step-child of Mystery and Journalism, has now become its own publishing industry like Romance and Sci-fi, and with its own set of specialty authors and sub-genres. Of course the same is true of New Age with its gaggle of Deepak Chopra wannabes waiting to cash in. Yet, while millions of readers are looking for eternal health with Cap'n Deepak, many others are running to True Crime in search of the polar opposite of New Age's angels and miracles: documented violence. Now this doesn't mean that the readers and authors of True Crime are bad people, or that they have something to be ashamed of, but the massive quantities of recent True Crime books means that these readers have a lot of garbage to pick through in order to unearth the gems of the genre, the books that make it stand out like a bloody finger print on a doorbell. Listed here for your enlightenment are classics and must-reads to anyone who needs a antidote to fiction.

The Classics:
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
The Executioner's Song by Norman Mailer
Crafted by powerhouses of American writing, these books are crystal clear in every detail. You will find yourself floating in a glass bubble through the small towns in Kansas and Utah where these tales of murder and justice unfurl. In Cold Blood is about a family of four who had their faces blasted with shotguns in the middle of the night, late in 1959. As there were no clues and no motive, the tight knit town of Holcomb starts to crack as everyone suspects each other. Meanwhile we get to follow the killers, from inside the bubble and inside their heads as they bumble across the country.

The Executioners Song follows Gary Gilmore, a convict jailed for the majority of his life, during the nine months between getting paroled from prison and landing strapped in a chair before a firing squad. Gilmore became a national story after he
refused to appeal his death sentence for the murder of a motel keeper and a gas station attendant. Christened as a "True Life Novel," Mailer keeps the story running smooth and clear for over a thousand pages. Two of the best books written in the 20th century, they make about everything else you've ever read seem sloppy and cheap.

The Champ:
Helter Skelter by Vincent Bugliosi with Curt Gentry
While The Executioner's Song won the Pulitzer Prize, Helter Skelter boasts on its cover "The World's #1 True Crime Best Seller." and the opening page declares "The story you are about to read will scare the hell out of you." Well I bet it did in 1974, but by now Charles Manson has been transformed into America's favorite crazy uncle, and the Tate-LaBianca murders seem almost transparent as if their was never any question who committed them or why. Nonetheless, Helter Skelter is a really great read. The writing doesn't crackle anything like the books above, but its dry super thorough, almost Dragnet, style works very well. Bugliosi was the prosecutor during the Manson trial, and the detail is almost hypnotic. Helter Skelter is the model for almost every trashy True Crime book that has come out since; the authors want to establish their wacko killer as the scariest maniac since Charles Manson, but reading Helter Skelter will confirm for you that Charlie has so completely entered to American psyche that no one will ever come close. Another funny thing about reading the book now is rediscovering how much criminal science has advanced during the last 25 years. I kept saying to myself, "What about the DNA testing?"

The Runners Up:
My Dark Places by James Ellory
Perfect Murder Perfect Town by Lawrence Schiller
Three Month Fever, by Gary Indiana
Homicide by David Simon
The Corner by David Simon and Edward Burns
Dedication to quality and utter lack of sensationalism sets these books apart from their peers/competition. My Dark Places is about James Ellory's search for the man who killed his mother when he was ten. Ellory has spent two decades reviving the prefect LA crime novel, including L.A. Confidential and White Jazz. This book is both a story of his adult search for the murderer, and is a memoir of how his mother's death made him into the guy he is. Remarkable for how amazingly bad a picture he paints of himself as a teenager,( i.e. sleeping under a bush, eating nasal inhalants to get high and then breaking into the homes of girls he had a crush on so he could steal their underwear) My Dark Places frames beautifully a picture of what life is like when horrible crimes are not solved and put away neatly.

For everyone who has made up their mind already, Lawrence Schiller's Perfect Murder Perfect Town, about the murder of 6 year old beauty queen, JonBenet Ramsey totally clouds the picture. From page to page, the book forced me to change my mind about her killed her and how. Schiller, who appears in The Executioner's Song as both media wheeler-dealer and as a co-author (on the inside cover) is so decidedly evenhanded that the book almost feels like a test. Will you jump to conclusions or not? After awhile it starts to hurt.

Three Month Fever is a retelling of the cross-country murder spree of Andrew Cunanan and the media freak-out that accompanied it, climaxing in the murder of Superstar Fashion Designer Gianni Versace and then Cunanan's houseboat suicide. Gary Indiana fictionalizes sections of the book with a focus on Cunanan's self fictionalization. Flamboyant as all hell, Three Month Fever ends with the line "The bullet bounced around his skull and came to rest with out damaging his face, contrary to all reports. In fact, Andrew looked really, really pretty." One reviewer noted that the book seemed like "Capote on Peyote." Sure

My final two entries are fantastic and depressing works of journalism. Homicide is the story of a year spent working with a section of Homicide detectives in Baltimore. The Corner is about a year at an open air drug market also in Baltimore. While
Homicide can sometimes be buoyant with the suspense and drama and humor, like the television series based on the book, The Corner is possibly the most powerfully depressing book you will ever read. I kept asking my girlfriend why I was on heroin. "You're not on heroin, she would reply, "everyone in your book is on heroin." Later I would ask her how I got pregnant at fourteen. "You're not pregnant."

Now, I don't recommend that you read these works of True Crime in this order, or, God forbid, all at once. You should certainly read them, if for no other reason to stave off more shelf space for those evil "Chicken Soup for the..." books. Once you do, you may not turn away from Fiction, but you will certainly demand more from what you get. If you ever get lonely for it, read Cruddy, the super dark and bloody masterpiece by Lynda Barry, or Purple America by Rick Moody, who also wrote The Ice Storm. Sure True Crime is really just a trend, but make sure you ride it out from the top.