Murder, organized crime, and....well, more murder. This month's episode is all about true crime, from recent bestsellers to the evolution of the genre. Featuring authors Bobbi-Jean MacKinnon and Peter Edwards, plus BookNet's Monique Mongeon.
(Scroll down for a transcript of the conversation.)
Curious about some of the articles we reference? Find them here:
NYT: Investigation Discovery Network Makes Crime Pay
Slate: The True Crime Memoir
Time: Murder shows — The New Soap Opera for Women?
The Hairpin: Why are Women Obsessed with True Crime
Buzzfeed: Being "polite" often gets women killed
The Atlantic: How a True Crime Podcast Became a Mental Health Support Group
Study – Captured by True Crime: Why are Women Drawn to Tales of Rape, Murder, and Serial Killers?
Variety: True Crime on the Rise on TV
Toronto Life: Jennifer Pan's Revenge
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Transcript
Zalina: Welcome to the "BookNet Canada" podcast. I'm your host, Zalina Alvi, and this month we're talking about true crime from recent bestsellers to evolutions of the genre. I hope you're somewhere warm and safe because the next 30 minutes are all about murder, organized crime, and, well, more murder. True Crime as a genre began more or less about 35 years ago, when Ann Rule published her book, "The Stranger Beside Me," which is all about serial killer, Ted Bundy, whom she knew personally before and after his arrest. Since then, hundreds if not thousands of true crime books have been published in Canada. As of today, there are about 5,000 ISBNs and Biblioshare categorized as true crime.
Many of these are by Ann Rule herself, and you can still find classics like Truman Capote's in "Cold Blood" and "Helter Skelter" on lists of nationwide bestsellers. But while these American classics remain popular with Canadian readers, if you look at the top 10 best-selling true crime books of the last year, half of them were written by Canadian authors about true Canadian crimes. Two are about the death of Richard Oland in the trial of Dennis Oland. One is about a woman's marriage to a con man. The fourth is about outlaws and bike clubs. And the last is all about Canada's most infamous bootlegger. It's clear that Canadian true crime readers have an interest in true Canadian crimes. We sat down with Bobbi-Jean MacKinnon to talk about her book, "Shadow of Doubt," which follows the murder of East Coast multimillionaire, Richard Oland, and why Canadian readers were so captivated by that trial.
Bobbi-Jean: My name is Bobbi-Jean MacKinnon. I'm a reporter and web editor for CBC based in Saint John, New Brunswick. I'm from Ottawa originally and graduated from Carleton University School of Journalism, and worked at newspapers for many years, including the "Ottawa Citizen," the "Toronto Star," and "Telegraph Journal," and "Shadow of Doubt: The Trials of Dennis Oland" is my first book.
Zalina: Actually, we looked at the best-selling true crime books from the last year, the print market according to sales data, and it was the number one book for that period of time. So, I'm assuming it was a fairly big trial. And my first question is, why do you think Canadians were so interested in this particular trial and can you tell us a little bit about what it was actually about?
Bobbi-Jean: Sure. So, it's about the murder of multimillionaire Richard Oland in Saint John, New Brunswick in 2011, and the trial of his son Dennis Oland. The Olands are a very prominent family in the Maritimes. They're the founders of Moosehead Breweries, the oldest independently owned brewery in Canada. And Richard Oland's bludgeoned body was found lying facedown in a pool of blood in his investment firm office on July 7th, 2011. He suffered 45 blows to his head, neck and hands. And his only son, Dennis Oland, was the last known person to see him alive during a visit to his office the night before.
About two years later, he was arrested. And about two years after that was the trial. And it was largely a circumstantial case. No murder weapon was ever found. The crown's key piece of evidence against him was a bloodstained brown sports jacket and the alleged motives were that Dennis Oland was more than $745,000 in debt, and allegedly angry over his father's extramarital affair. And a jury found him guilty of second-degree murder on December 19th, 2015. And he was sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for at least 10 years.
And it was really a divisive case. I mean, basically, there's three impassioned camps, those who firmly believe he's guilty, those who say he's innocent, and those who think he's probably guilty but that it wasn't proven beyond a reasonable doubt. I think part of that is that several problems with the police investigation came to light during the trial. Things like the number of people in and out of the bloody crime scene. There was evidence of officers using the washroom right outside the office for two days before it was forensically tested, the back door which the defence argued would be the killer's preferred escape route never being tested because someone had opened it and contaminated it. And there were also allegations the deputy chief encouraged another officer not to reveal that the deputy chief had entered the crime scene.
And that's sort of where the title comes from. At the beginning of the investigation when the police chief announced Richard Oland's death was a homicide, he said, "We do not wanna make a mistake. We want to be able to prove this case without a shadow of doubt." But as I said, you know, public opinion remains divided. And so I think it's fair to say a shadow of doubt hangs over this case for a lot of people, but his family has stood by him from the beginning maintaining his innocence. You know, it's been described as a family tragedy of Shakespearean proportions, the OJ Simpson case of the Maritimes crime of the century. No, it's just really a tragic, fascinating story that's left a family and the city forever changed. And it's really captivated people, not just in Saint John, but right across Canada.
There's still so many unanswered questions. A murder weapon was never found. What happened to it? Richard Oland's iPhone went missing and was presumably taken by whoever killed him. But it had been backed up in his computer and there was no incriminating evidence on it. And, you know, if not Dennis Oland, then who? The defence never really offered up another suspect. And I, you know, I think it also raised the ugly issue of whether we have a two-tiered justice system, you know, that most people wouldn't be able to keep fighting the way Dennis Oland has. Some estimates have put the defence costs at $5 million and counting. But then the flip side of that, of course, is that some people believe he was convicted because he's rich, that he was, you know, somehow being punished by the jury and public opinion for that.
I think there's also a universality to stories about families and relationships. There's a certain voyeuristic appeal, I guess, for those fascinated by the rich and famous, maybe makes them seem more like everyone else, more human, more fallible. And it also comes at a time when reality and entertainment shows like "Keeping Up With The Kardashians" and crime dramas like "CSI" are really popular. And when interest in productions like the "Serial," or sorry, the podcast, "Serial," and Netflix documentary, "Making a Murderer" is exploding. It's just a real story with real people and real stakes.
Zalina: Yeah, I mean, it doesn't sound at all surprising that there was enough content and enough interest to publish a book about it. Right? Can you tell me a little bit about how that came to be? Where did the idea to actually publish a book about it come from?
Bobbi-Jean: I have covered a lot of court cases over the years but this was like unlike any other I had ever covered. Everywhere I went, it was all anyone wanted to talk about. During the trial, a lot of people asked me if I was going to write a book, but I was just so busy with the daily news reporting. I couldn't even think about it. I was putting in, you know, 12, 14-hour days every day for about three months throughout the trial. And then after the trial, people seemed to wanna talk about it even more. You know, I'd be at a party or at the grocery store, or, you know, it seemed like there was always someone who would come up to me and say, "You were there for the whole thing. What do you think?" And, you know, what I think doesn't really matter. Like the trial judge said, you know, only the opinions of the jurors really mattered. And as a reporter, I believe it's important to maintain objectivity, and this case is very much still ongoing, and I'm still covering it. But I just felt that it needed to be more fully told. And I had a lot of additional information that didn't make it into my daily reports, you know, court sat for six or seven hours every day and radio reports are only about one minute. And TV reports are only about two minutes. So, you can only tell the story in broad brushstrokes just sort of touching on the highlights. So it was a chance to sort of use all that information to tell a more comprehensive story with the advantage of hindsight, you know, being able to look back and sort of connect all the dots.
If you or your listeners have ever sat trial before, you know that the lawyers don't always present the case in an easy-to-follow fashion and you may not know exactly where they're going with something until their closing statements when they sort of tie it all together. And during the trial, you've also got, you know, witness one talking about issues A, B, and C and witness two, talking about X, Y, and Z. And so, with the book, I was able to go back and say, "Okay, who talked about issue A and what did they say?" So, I could sort of present it in a more coherent way and also write it in a different style with more colour and personal observations. It was also a chance to delve more into the family's history and prominence and some of the relationships and dynamics. And, you know, it wasn't about trying to solve the case. It was just a chance to put all the information together in one place and empower readers to make their own informed opinions.
Zalina: I'd like to touch a little bit on the aftermath of the book. What was the reception like in those communities in New Brunswick, where all of this actually happened?
Bobbi-Jean: Well, you know, I think it's taken a real toll in the community. Like I said, you know, it left people very divided and it was a bit of a black eye as far as, you know, the police go, they faced a lot of scrutiny. And, you know, I think a lot of people didn't want any more publicity. And so some were upset that I wrote it and some, you know, of the professional relationships I worked hard to build have been damaged, I believe, possibly beyond repair in some cases, and it's a small city. So, you know, I've run into people and it can be awkward when I see people involved with the case. But, you know, I think both sides are equally disgruntled about everything. So I guess that means I'm doing my job and being objective. I hope they feel that I've presented the facts fairly but it's actually really interesting, because I've had some people tell me that they thought he was innocent, and after reading my book, they think he's guilty, and vice versa. They were sure he did it and now, they're not so sure. So, everyone seems to see something different in there.
Zalina: Another Canadian journalist who's turned his reporting into best-selling true crime books is Peter Edwards. A reporter for the Toronto Star, Peter focuses on organized crime, and actually had his book "Business or Blood" adapted into a new mini-series on City TV, and the TV tie-in edition, retitled "Bad Blood" has been the number one true crime book for the last couple of months. So how did you get into organized crime, or reporting on organized crime, I should say?
Peter: Sort of a roundabout route, like I took history in university and I always really liked looking at how society moves along. And it seems like a lot of the big topics were taken. And, like, you don't want to write the 5,000th book on Churchill, or you want something fresh. And with organized crime, it was obviously a big thing in Canada, right from the fur trade on. And yet, there hadn't been that much done on it. So that was part of it. You could get good original research. Working at the paper, it was a chance to get an area that was just mine. Like, when I went to the Toronto Star, it was like you're tripping over the other reporters. There were, you know, dance reporters, police reporters, all sorts of reporters and so you wanted one area that you could have as your own. So then there was another part of it, where I couldn't stand covering the crime stories where it was like a five-year-old girl who was the victim or the grandmother or something where sort of what seems like a random senseless cruel act. Those ones would really stay with you and the crimes that you felt a little more distance from were the ones where it was two criminals playing the same game and it was more of a tactical thing and it went into it with their eyes, at least partly open. So those were the stories that I was a little more comfortable covering.
Zalina: And how did you get started actually publishing whole books on the topic? Was it serendipity? Did you pitch it?
Peter: It was an idea where I guess they're trying to think of how do I really get started with this? And I thought, why not take the family that did the most for the longest time in organized crime and try and analyze why they did it? And I know there was an excellent history in the University of Toronto, Michael Bliss. He did the same thing with conventional Canadian business. And so I thought, why don't I just do that with the illegal business? Like, why don't I pick one crime empire or one crime network and really, really look at it over time? And I did that with the Rizutto family in Montreal that seemed to be the biggest in Canada and doing that other things flowed through it. So it was a really good jumping-off point to do a lot of other things.
Zalina: I've looked at the top-selling True Crime books over the last few years, the last year, the last few weeks, and your name always comes up. They're obviously very popular. What do you think it is about, I don't know, the topic or these particular books, organized crime that resonates with Canadian readers?
Peter: I think people are wondering, what would it be like if I went outside of the rules, you know, instead of doing my normal job, working normal hours following normal rules, what if I went outside and just followed what I wanted to do, would I be happier? Would I be richer? Where would that lead me? I think there's that. I think there’s also people wonder, are they that much different than me? And I mean, I've been fortunate to talk to a lot of people who were involved in this sort of life. And so I think part of the attraction is people are comparing their lives to these lives and trying to... Even criminals, a lot of them think they have sort of boring life or ordinary life. And so, it's interesting, just as the contrast, but in 20 minutes, I'm gonna see a guy who was in the Hells Angels, who a lot of his childhood was very, very ordinary.
Zalina: Wow, okay, interesting. I was gonna ask, is this a very dangerous career path? Do people worry about you at home?
Peter: People worry, and I mean, I worry too, but I worry a lot about cholesterol. I worry about bad drivers. I worry about tax bills. With a lot of this, I can control the exposure and who I'm dealing with. I'm starting a book now with a Mexican journalist who, I mean, he has real things to worry about, like, really significant threats. He's had a loaded gun pointed at him five times. He was driven from his country. I mean, it's not realistic for me to compare any threat level I have to what he has.
Zalina: We were previously discussing on the podcast just the recent increased interest in true crime. So we were talking about "Serial," obviously, coming out in 2014. It was a very popular podcast. You've seen "Making a Murderer" on television. One of your books is getting turned into a miniseries on City TV. It's "Bad Blood." So I mean, have you seen personally just an increased interest from people in Canada and true crime? Do you think it's just a hot topic right now?
Peter: It never seems to really wane, though. Like, it always seems to hang in there. There always seems to be something going on. And part of it, I think, is that when it seems to have died down, something will happen in someone's neighbourhood that they just don't expect it to have happened. I mean, someone was shot to death in a really significant organized crime killing in front of George Brown College in downtown Toronto. And so, that one got a lot of interest. There'll be something that will happen where people just... It makes them jump a bit because you like to think that you control how safe your neighbourhood is and how safe your life is, and yet, average people pass through these places and people who do these things all the time. It's not something that's taking part in a separate community far, far away. It’s something tied into mainstream society.
Zalina: Yeah, I was looking at the top-selling true crime books over the last, well, regardless of which time period I was looking at. And it's very much focused on Canadian titles. Like, it's more so than it seems in other categories. Which is interesting people seem like, yeah, they actually care about the crimes and criminals in their actual communities that they have a personal connection to.
Peter: Yeah, like someone who... A reader who gets moved to Hamilton asked me what's going on in Hamilton, and I gave him a couple of addresses of, you know, this is where this happened. This is where that happened. And I think it's just an interesting habit, a reference point when people find out that where they get their bread or where they get their favourite sandwich is a place run by an organized criminal, that generally gets their interest. People always joke that this isn't an American thing or this isn't from somewhere else. And so, I think that's part of the interest too, like, with the "Bad Blood" TV series, the idea that Canadians are in there functioning with Americans and actually doing quite well in that world, I think that pulls an interest.
Zalina: But while murder and organized crime have long been go-to subjects for the true crime genre, the last few years have seen some interesting trends arise, both in books and in wider popular culture. Joining me on the podcast to further discuss the evolution of the true crime genre is BookNet project manager and lover of true crime, Monique Mongeon. Monique, thank you for joining us on this month's podcast.
Monique: Thank you. I'm so excited to talk about murder with one of my favourite colleagues.
Zalina: And your favourite subject.
Monique: Yeah.
Zalina: I understand that you just you're obsessed with murder, right?
Monique: Like, I mean, I would not maybe put it that way. I don't do murder myself nor hire from anyone else. But I've always been really interested in crime shows, and obviously, this sort of true crime renaissance that happened, especially in podcasts and books, has really caught my interest. And I can't... Like, most people, I think once you're in, you're in. You're addicted.
Zalina: I mean, there's no shortage.
Monique: No, absolutely. And it seems like there's always more. There's always more information. You can always do more digging on the cases you're reading about online or in any other medium. So, there's lots of interesting stuff to talk about around true crime, aside from the crime itself.
Zalina: Exactly. And so would you say thatthe renaissance you mentioned, it started with Serial?
Monique: I think so. I think that was maybe kind of unexpected for a podcast of that nature, especially like a public radio podcast, like, it seemed so nerdy. And it really blew up, and people got so addicted to it. It was interesting too to then see that spin out into other true crime mediums that maybe, like Investigation Discovery, there's this huge article in "The New York Times" about how Investigation Discovery, which is like a 24-hour true crime cable network is, like, they have over 100 million viewers in over 157 countries. And that started before Serial, but it sort of shows that there was, like, this sort of growing market and then Serial just jumped in and kind of brought this whole other side to it that I think "Time" called Investigation Discovery's programming kind of soap opera-y and a little bit I don't wanna say trashy, they didn't use that word, but they gave it kind of like this guilty pleasure aspect that I think Serial kind of turned it around, and made it seem very serious, and journalistic, and presented in a sort of the kind of this American lifestyle, where it's very, I don't know, just like, very well packaged in a way that's very different from the way true crime was packaged before.
Zalina: And whereas, it was something you watched as sort of like an escapist, as you said, guilty pleasure on Saturday night. That was like water cooler talk, discussing your theories, and debating, and exchanging facts online now. Right?
Monique: Absolutely. And there's this... You pointed out this Slate article we were talking about the other day around the office that transition into a more literary space for true crime seems to kind of mirror what happened with Investigation Discovery, and then moving into Serial and these other explorations of true crime, where they're all being taken a bit more seriously now. Yeah, it's really interesting to see this genre kind of mature.
Zalina: But do you think it's mostly in... Like, there's Serial and the million true crime podcasts that have come out since. And the TV series, there is "Making a Murderer," which was like the next year. "Mind Hunter" is just coming out now. Like, so those were the big blockbusters. But has there been anything really in the book sphere that you can think of?
Monique: There's a few... There's a local book about, I can't think of the name of the book right now, about Jennifer Pan, which the book started out as a story in Toronto life. I don't know if maybe I've just heard about it a lot, because it happened here in Toronto, which is where I live. And so it's a case most of us had heard about while it was happening. But yeah, it's hard to see and when we look at the list of best-selling true crime books over the last few years, it does seem like there's still a lot of what we would call maybe the classics or the perennial sellers in the true crime genre, and not as many of the newer titles.
Zalina: Yeah, I mean, if anything, the new trend seems to be somewhat outside of the regular box of true crime books. And as you mentioned, the Slate article that talked about the new literary type of true crime books, many of those seem to be almost straight-up memoirs, like, there are the true crime memoirs, and they're falling more or less under biographies or autobiographies.
Monique: Yeah. And you see that in the way they're categorized too using BISAC subjects is that some of them are just being categorized as memoir and not categorized in nonfiction true crime or any of the subcategories of true crime that exist in the BISAC code list. I don't know, do we wanna talk maybe about some of those?
Zalina: Yes. Yeah. All right.
Monique: Let’s dive into the subjects. So, yeah, there's true crime general, and then there's a bunch of different... The subjects for true crime really do kind of break things out based on the type of crime, not necessarily about the sort of perspective of the book or the outcome of the crime. So, there's abductions, kidnapping, missing persons, con artists, hoaxes and deceptions, espionage, forensics, heists and robberies, murder general, murder mass murder, and murder serial killers, organized crime, sexual assault, and white-collar crime. So those are... That's the list. It's quite a big list. A bunch of those categories are actually new from the 2017 edition, which is interesting because it's showing that there's more of an appetite for books in those areas. Because to get a subject added to the BISAC list, you have to prove that there's growing interest in books in that category. So yeah, it's interesting to see the newest categories are the abductions, kidnappings, missing persons, heists and robberies, and mass murder, and sexual assault. All new for 2017.
Zalina: And forensics.
Monique: And forensics. Yes.
Zalina: Yes, I believe so.
Monique: Yeah. The CSI effect maybe.
Zalina: Well, yeah, it's interesting when we looked at also the keywords that were being applied to true crime books, the titles that are listed in Biblioshare under that category. And forensics and I think forensic science were like in the top 10 keywords being used on those titles. So, it definitely seems like that's an area that will be booming in popularity, perhaps. Definitely worthy of a new BISAC.
Monique: Yeah, absolutely, especially once you sort out crime as a keyword, which is obviously a keyword in a true crime book. But once you get into the things that are kind of the types of things you would use a subject category for, you are seeing those represented in the keywords.
Zalina: Do you think there's anything missing still?
Monique: From the BISAC subjects?
Zalina: Yeah.
Monique: Yeah, I think there's some interesting things you could do. If you compare it to Thema, for example, which is another subject category system, Thema breaks up true crime into two distinct areas and the way Thema works is that there's a base code that then you add additional. It's additive, so you're constantly adding modifiers to the existing code. So, in Thema, there's true crime, which is biography, literature and literary studies, biography and nonfiction prose, true stories general/true crime.
Zalina: So it gets more and more granular?
Monique: Yeah, more and more granular. So you're starting like the base of the true crime Thema subject is biography, literature, and literary studies, which kind of gives it this weight in terms of its seriousness that I think has not been associated with true crime for a really long time when it was kind of your, like, trashy, like, guilty pleasure, Investigation Discovery type, soap opera-y thing, whereas the other subject category in Thema for true crime, there’s only these two, is all of the same sort of top-level categories but then when you get to true stories, it becomes true stories of survival of abuse and injustice. So, Thema's interest in true crime is really kind of about the crime or about the survivor, or victim of the crime, and the justice system aspect. So it's very different from the way BISAC looks at true crime, which is categorizing it based on the type of crime. And when we think to that Slate article again, and how many of those memoirs are about victims of crime or centred around the victim or survivor's experience of crime, it seems like that's an area where the subject category needs to grow, because those are two very different types of book.
Zalina: Yeah. And it seems I mean, the way BISAC is organized, it's hard to... You're either kind of under nonfiction true crime or you're under biography and autobiography. And the subcategories under there, there's criminals and outlaws, and then there's personal memoirs. So I mean, it's hard to kind of get across that it's a combination of those things, I guess.
Monique: Yeah. And if you, for example, wanted to publish a book about an exonerated criminal or wrongfully convicted person, you probably wouldn't wanna categorize it under criminals and outlaws, because you're making a statement about that person that I would imagine they would not want you to make. And similarly with victims and survivors of crime, there's no category for them in BISAC that encompasses that experience. So it would have to be just a personal memoir, which is not exactly the narrative that you're telling, or it's maybe not the most granular way of expressing that.
Zalina: So it seems like the room to evolve the category is in the stories of...like survivor stories, personal memoirs, that kind of thing.
Monique: Yeah, I think there's a lot of interest in that. I think, especially when you see like abductions, kidnappings and missing persons, there were a lot of memoirs of survivors of those types of crimes published in the last couple of years, which I imagine is why the category was added to BISAC. But there's nothing more granular to say that it's about the survivors more than it's about the person who committed the crime. And those are, again, two very different types of narratives and you might want to make that easier for people to discover the type of that story they wanna hear.
Zalina: Yeah, I mean, I looked at the top-selling memoirs for the last 13 weeks and, like, there's just a whole bunch of titles, "The Glass Castle," "Run, Hide, Repeat," "Missing Mother," "A Beautiful, Terrible Thing," "A House in The Sky" that are all at least true crime adjacent. So, I mean, I don't know, there hasn't been a discernible real, you know, sales spike in the true crime category in the last few years. But if you look at the biography category, and the just the biography bestseller list, I mean, so many of those titles are these types of books.
Monique: Absolutely. And so it would be interesting if we could get a list of every crime and crime adjacent true crime type book to see if there's a growth in that area that might be more telling than what we're seeing necessarily with just the true crime BISACs.
Zalina: That's also interesting to note that many of these books, particularly the true crime memoirs, are written by and about women. Have you noticed that?
Monique: Yes. Yeah, actually, I have so many feelings about women and true crime as a woman lover of true crime. Yeah, it's really interesting because that Slate article, which I feel like we've talked about a lot so far, but it is so interesting and such an interesting exploration of sort of true crime and books is that the closer true crime kind of started to slide into memoir, compared to how it used to be, which was a more sort of commercial and investigative journalism approach is that when it got closer to memoir, more women were writing those stories. And it was kind of like for and about women. So it's really interesting this like female-authored true crime narrative that was for women. And there's a lot of interesting studies and articles about women and true crime specifically. Yeah, so do we want to get into it?
Zalina: Yes. Okay. What do those articles say? I mean, what is the kind of like...? Why are they so women-focused?
Monique: Yeah, it's interesting, because there's a few kind of main prevailing theories. So one of them is that it is a sort of cathartic narrative of crime where the perpetrator is held accountable. So, you go on this kind of, like, journey with the narrator of the story where the crime is experienced, and you get this, like, hit of adrenaline, you're excited, you're scared, it's terrifying. You're thrilled, there's suspense. And then when you go through the sort of back end, the justice part of it is that you eventually do see the perpetrator punished for their crime in some way. And that, because women are so often the victims of crime or feel a fear that they may become a victim of a crime, they find that kind of like comforting in a way to see a sort of black and white depiction of crime and then punishment, in the same way that a lot of women I think, are interested in shows like "CSI," and "Law & Order," and all of those shows that I definitely watched as I was, like, a young woman growing into an adult, because there is this sort of sense that, like, you go on this horrifying journey, and then all is right in the end, and that there's a sort of comfort in that.
And then there was an interesting piece by Scaachi Koul on Buzzfeed called "Being Polite Often Gets Women Killed," where she actually recounts a situation where a listener of a true crime podcast called "My Favourite Murder," actually rescued another woman who was also a listener of "My Favourite Murder." She spotted a man hunched behind this woman's car in a parking lot. And they actually approached him together and he ran away. And at the end, they sort of talked about how their listening of that podcast, and kind of thinking about crime, and being sort of constantly immersed in this culture of learning about crime made them feel more prepared to prevent it from happening to them.
Zalina: Wow.
Monique: Yeah, it's so interesting. Georgia, one of the hosts of "My Favourite Murder" actually says like, "We wanna know all about it, so it'll never happen to us."
Zalina: Yes, that makes sense. Where do you think the ones more about perversions of justice or the justice system failing or ones where the wrong person has been convicted, like, you know, well, that's debatable material. I suppose I shouldn't make a blatant...
Monique: Yeah, we still don't know, Zalina.
Zalina: Well, I feel like I know but yeah. Or like "Making a Murderer" is a better example. I mean, do you think that it fits into it in some way?
Monique: I don't think it does. I think that those types of stories definitely kind of subvert that sense of it being comforting, because you see it all tied up in the end, and everything ends in a sort of, like, satisfying you feel this sense of justice upon you kind of way. But I think those stories are much more interesting to people from that, like, survival aspect. Like, they wanna know, how do they do it? Why do they do it? What do I need to be looking for? How can I protect myself? And it's really interesting because there was a study, it's by Amanda Vicary, and R. Chris Fraley, and we can link to it in the notes for the show. But it actually suggests that 70% of women readers prefer true crime books that offer psychological insights and survival techniques. Not necessarily that at the end of the book, there's a chapter that says like, "This is how you could survive this type of crime."
Zalina: There could be.
Monique: There could be. I mean, that would be an interesting option. But I think it's when they feel that they're learning something about the signs to look out for, about how they could protect themselves that really appeals to them. And the study that Vicary and Fraley did was that they took a couple of different books and then they wrote copy for them that suggested what was gonna be in the book. And so one of the books was a, kind of, more, like, violent investigative journalism type, and the other was more of a psychological exploration of, like, the story of the crime and the story of the survival of the crime, that kind of thing. And then they offered those two books to readers, and then looked to see which ones the women chose. And by and large, they chose the one that offered the sort of survival and psychological aspects. That was really interesting. And the full study is available to read online. So, I highly recommend people check it out. It's super interesting.
I don't know, it's kind of upsetting when I think about that true crime is sort of taking this, like, fear a lot of women have about their sense of safety in their life. And I don't wanna say exploiting it, but it's feeding into it. There were a lot of the articles that talked about the sort of, like, binge-watching and how like, you get into it, and you get into it, but then you get really afraid.
Zalina: Or providing an outlet for something that is other times more buried.
Monique: Yeah, there's an interesting piece on The Hairpin, where they talked about how maybe women's interest in true crime is like a revenge fantasy, and how it lets women express these sort of, like, darker and more violent feelings that normally culturally they're not allowed to express. That was really interesting as well. And they did some brief parallels to different reality television shows and the ways that you can see that sort of aggressiveness, and, like, blasé sort of jokes about murder in that in that aspect and how that might be related.
Zalina: Yeah, I mean, it fulfills all of those things. I mean, you could look at just thrillers or horror, perhaps, for some of those purposes and outlets but true crime seems to be the full package.
Monique: Absolutely. I think there's so much in that it's like a real person's story. And I think, because when you circle back around to that, more women are writing these memoir-type true crime novels, it's so much more relatable to women reading it than maybe reading a horror novel or something fictional because it's a real person, and it's in their voice, and they feel like they're getting like, it's sort of an inside scoop, almost like they're vicariously experiencing the crime. And that way they can, like, learn from that person's experience and move forward. It's really... I don't know, it's interesting and upsetting. And, like, I hate to think that people are, kind of, like, being dragged into this like sense of anxiety about their personal safety. But I think a lot of people do relate to that feeling. I remember I read a lot of true crime books at a job I had, I read like a bunch of them all in one week. And I remember going home to my apartment, it was the winter so it gets dark early. And every time I was going to my apartment, I'm like, "I'm gonna get killed. This is the day it's gonna be over." But it was because I'd been, like, binging on all this crime content, and you get this sense that, like, everyone you don't know might kill you.
Zalina: Although isn't it mostly the people you do know?
Monique: It's true. It is sadly. And I think that's the kind of interesting when you look at podcasts like "My Favourite Murder," where they take a more, I don't wanna say comedic but a more lighthearted and jokey tone about some of the content where that sort of like their catchphrase, "Stay sexy, don't get murdered," it sounds like something you might kind of jokingly tell your friend as you're parting ways to get on the streetcar. But there's so much behind that when you think about the stories that in Scaachi's piece, she talks about, like, posting on the group and asking people to talk about how the podcast resonated with them and what true crime makes them feel. And it was a lot about empowerment and feeling like they're more able to take on a criminal should they ever be faced by one.
Zalina: Wow. So true crime is replacing the self-defence class is what you're telling me?
Monique: I mean, I think for a lot of people it is. It's like sort of infotainment. I hate that word so much. But it does seem a lot like people are really trying to learn something from this content. And it may not be being prepared to be that but it is serving that purpose.
Zalina: And in the cases of a lot of those really, you know, well-written literary true crime memoirs, it's also just a really great story.
Monique: Absolutely. There's some really compelling stories. I think people in novels of all kinds have always been drawn to darker human stories or secret stories. There's this sense of kind of voyeurism of getting to see a side of humanity you don't get to access in your normal life. And I think there are definitely people who are into true crime for that as well.
Zalina: All sales figures are from BNC Sales Data, the national sales tracking service for print English language books in Canada. Thanks to Bobbi-Jean, Peter, and Monique, for joining me on this month's podcast. If you'd like to check out a few more stats on true crime or learn more about what we do, you can visit our blog at booknetcanada.ca. We'll also post a full list of all the links to the articles that we talked about today. We gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund for this project. And of course, thanks to you for listening.
