Deconstructing True Crime Literature

Charlotte Barnes is a Lecturer in Creative and Professional Writing at the University of Wolverhampton. Charlotte has primarily researched crime fiction through practice-based means, and has since published ten novels in this genre. Charlotte explores representations of female violence, and the ways in which this area can critique and contribute both to creative writing and gender studies.

• Chapter one: Introduction.- Chapter two: Time of Death: The early era of True Crime.- Chapter three: Writing the “I” in True Crime.- Chapter four: Vincent Bugliosi’s Objectivity: Can we side-step bias in True Crime?.- Chapter five: The Writer Inside Me: Does Ann Rule’s proximity to the serial killer celebrity translate to a reliable re-telling?.- Chapter six: Writing True Crime from a safe distance.- Chapter seven: Truman Capote’s World of Make-Believe: How does figurative language and creative license distort truth in In Cold Blood?.- Chapter eight: 3,500 files and an unfinished script: Is well-curated research and collaboration the key to truthful True Crime, considered through Michelle McNamara’s I’ll Be Gone in the Dark?.- Chapter nine: Writing creative (true) crime narratives.- Chapter ten: Manson’s Girls Make a Comeback: How (c)overt is the influence of the Charles Manson case on Emma Cline’s The Girls, and should readers be expected to ignore the connections?.- Chapter eleven: Narrative Hybridity in True Crime: Is Maggie Nelson integrating poetry into the True Crime genre?.- Chapter twelve: Conclusion.