True crime (genre)

True crime is a non-fiction genre in which the author uses an actual crime and real people as a point of departure. What follows can be fairly factual or highly speculative and heavily fictionalized depending on the writer. Some works are "instant books" produced virtually overnight to capitalize on popular demand while others represent years of thoughtful research and inquiry. Still others revisit historic crimes (or alleged crimes) and make implausible and sometimes impossible claims of solutions, such as any number of sensational books claiming to present solutions to political assassination, unusually lurid and well-known unsolved murders, or the deaths of celebraties even when authorities have ruled out foul play.

The modern genre is usually traced to Truman Capote's "non-fiction novel" In Cold Blood, published in 1966, although Jack Webb's 1958 The Badge certainly resonates with later works and has been republished with an introduction by James Ellroy.

Many works in this genre explore and sometimes exploit high-profile, sensational crimes by such serial killers as Ted Bundy, the JonBenét Ramsey killing, the O. J. Simpson case, and the Pamela Smart murder, while others are devoted to more obscure slayings.

Later prominent true crime accounts include Helter Skelter by lead Manson family prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi and Curt Gentry; Ann Rule's The Stranger Beside Me and Joe McGuiness's Fatal Vision.