Sarah Weinman has curated an excellent collection of stories and essays, even for those true crime readers who may think they have heard it all before. Each story has a different spin or is told from a different point of view than anything you have previously read. While the facts may be familiar, there is new information, or a new angle of looking at the same facts throughout this entire collection.
Weinman has divided these tales into three separate sections: narratives, a discussion of where crime fits into current popular culture, and a broader look at the justice system in society. It is a brilliant way of organising the book to clearly get the reader to understand that no one is retelling these stories for entertainment value, but rather to use them as examples and start to look at a bigger picture, built from those individual stories.
The first section is “Narrative Features” where different true crime stories, that most everyone is familiar with, are told in a different way than we normally hear them. For instance, the feature on the University of Texas Tower shooting in the 1960’s is told from the point of view of one of the first victims that was shot that day. Having lived in Texas, and having grown up in Austin, I thought I knew the story backwards and forwards, but this is a way that I have never heard it told. Additionally, it is told within the broader scope of the survivor’s life story. Obviously her unwitting role in a famous true crime story is not the sum total of her life, and it was fascinating to see who she was before this occurred and who she became later on in life.
The second section is “Where Crime Meets Culture” and in this section the essays and stories examine different ways that crime intersects with popular culture. Sometimes good, sometimes bad, but this relatively new phenomenon is always interesting. In a discussion about the Slenderman case in Wisconsin in 2014 (which could actually be considered a case of culture meets crime, meets culture), the author looks at elements of the Salem Witch Trials, as well as the case of Pauline Parker and Juliet Hume, which was quite similar in many ways, except that it occurred 60 years earlier, in New Zealand. The case of Parker and Hume was the basis for the 1994 movie Heavenly Creatures.
This section also looks at the music video for Soul Asylum’s 1993 hit “Runaway Train” which featured actual missing children in the video. The author looks at some of the specific cases featured in the video as well as how this particular collaboration came to be. It was a strange feeling to be able to go to YouTube and find the video and see some of the images discussed in the story.
The third section of the book is “Justice and Society” and looks at a few specific issues in the justice system and how they came to be. From how new types of forensic science can spread throughout the system before they are necessarily scientifically sound, to how (and why) specific groups of people receive different treatment by the system.
Whether as a resource in writing about criminal justice issues, or for someone’s own personal education and knowledge, Sarah Weinman’s Unspeakable Acts is an excellent place to start.
Unspeakable Acts is available from Amazon, Book Depository, and other good book retailers, like your local bookstore.
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Synopsis | Goodreads
A brilliant anthology of modern true-crime writing that illustrates the appeal of this powerful and popular genre, edited and curated by Sarah Weinman, the award-winning author of The Real Lolita.
The appeal of true-crime stories has never been higher. With podcasts like My Favorite Murder and In the Dark, bestsellers like I’ll Be Gone in the Dark and Furious Hours, and TV hits like American Crime Story and Wild Wild Country, the cultural appetite for stories of real people doing terrible things is insatiable.
Acclaimed author of The Real Lolita and editor of Women Crime Writers: Eight Suspense Novels of the 1940s & 50s (Library of America) and Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives (Penguin), Sarah Weinman brings together an exemplary collection of recent true crime tales. She culls together some of the most refreshing and exciting contemporary journalists and chroniclers of crime working today. Michelle Dean’s “Dee Dee Wanted Her Daughter To Be Sick” went viral when it first published and is the basis for the TV show The Act and Pamela Colloff’s “The Reckoning,” is the gold standard for forensic journalism. There are 13 pieces in all and as a collection, they showcase writing about true crime across the broadest possible spectrum, while also reflecting what makes crime stories so transfixing and irresistible to the modern reader.
