Kuratierte Notizen & Neuigkeiten zur Kriminalliteratur | A sheet of notes & news about crime fiction
»Observers looked on in concern in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombings last week, as Reddit and 4Chan fingered assorted innocent civilians as suspects. Many were reminded of 17th-century witch hunts and Richard Jewell. Me, I thought of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.«
Laura Miller
Writer Laura Miller with one question: Why do we all think we have the expertise to solve crimes after watching CSI? Her essay at Salon.
»Nevertheless, Life After Life is far more than a game or a stunt; it’s rich in the gravity and texture of reality.«
Laura Miller
Writer and critic Laura Miller about the novel Life After Life by Kate Atkinson. Her review at Salon.
»Questions about the accuracy of In Cold Blood, the seminal 1966 “nonfiction novel” by Truman Capote, are nothing new. (…) Two recent developments, however, shed a particularly troubling light on Capote’s account of the 1959 murders of four members of the Clutter family in Holcomb, Kan. «
Laura Miller
New evidence suggests Truman Capote‘s In Cold Blood covers up an investigator’s goof that might have let the murderers kill again. Laura Miller reports at Salon.
»This is why The Following, with its thinly veiled infatuation with omnipotent, amoral killers, has no right to invoke Poe. Beneath the gothic trappings of his verse and tales is the truth of human life, rather than a callow, sub-Nietzschean fantasy about casting off all moral restraints.«
Laura Miller
The horror of the The Following comes not just from the storytelling, but from the way it maligns the literary legacy of Edgar Allan Poe, Laura Miller says. Her comment on the TV Drama you can read at salon.com.
»The Great Pearl Heist is a real-life, old-time Holmesian entertainment — Conan Doyle’s detective hero was invoked even by the journalists of the time.«
Laura Miller
Laura Miller about the true crime book The Great Pearl Heist by Molly Caldwell Crosby. Her review at salon.com.
»What you won’t find, however, is the book that many, many literary fiction buffs read and loved in the past six months: Gillian Flynn’s best-selling crime novel, Gone Girl. Flynn’s book is inventive, shrewd, mercilessly observant and stylishly written — qualities that are very welcome and likely to be celebrated in a literary novel.«
Laura Miller
“Genre fiction dissed again”: Laura Miller is missing Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn at The National Book Award finalist. Her pleading at salon.com.
»Yes, I’m being disingenuous here. The equation of The Wire with Victorian novels has much less to do with any meaningful similarities between the two than it does with asserting the legitimacy of television dramas as what Robinson calls “timeless art.”
Laura Miller
Laura Miller about the new book Down in the Hole: The unWired World of H.B. Ogden by Sean Michael Robinson and Joy DeLyria and why we should stop comparing the HBO series The Wire to Victorian novels. Her opinion at salon.com.
»Art and justice are not the same thing, however, and every would-be Encyclopedia Brown poring over A Wilderness of Error will find something special to fixate on or be appalled by: the prosecution’s attempts to suppress Stoeckley’s testimony and their flagrant disrespect for the principle of discovery are just two. Other readers, profoundly wedded to the belief that MacDonald is guilty, will refuse to reconsider. Jeffrey MacDonald’s version of what happened on Feb. 17, 1970, is pretty hard to credit, but it is not impossible.«
Laura Miller
Laura Miller about the non-fictional book A Wilderness of Errors: The Trials of Jeffrey MacDonald by Errol Morris. Her review at salon.com.
»I’m by no means an expert on the subject of prostitution, but as a journalist I’ve interviewed several sex workers at length. As a rule memoirs by women who have done the work present the most authentic picture, but with And When She Was Good, Lippman adds the rare novel to a short and essential shelf.«
Laura Miller
Her review of the audiobook of And When She Was Good by Laura Lippman at salon.com.
