• True Crime
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True Crime

$119.95
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True crime is a huge cultural industry: media organisations use crime stories to push sales and clicks. Yet behind this phenomenon lies the real-life victims and a disconnect between the representa...
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  • 18 November 2025
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True crime is a huge cultural industry: media organisations use crime stories to push sales and clicks. Yet behind this phenomenon lies the real-life victims and a disconnect between the representation of violent crime and its reality.

This book is a go-to guide for students and researchers in understanding the development of this phenomenon and its social and cultural impacts. Through case studies including Lucy Letby, the Yorkshire Ripper and Fred and Rosemary West, the book considers true crime’s ethical implications and its wider influence on crime and punishment.

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Price: $119.95
Pages: 198
Publisher: Bristol University Press
Imprint: Bristol University Press
Publication Date: 18 November 2025
ISBN: 9781529238150
Format: Hardcover
BISACs: SOCIAL SCIENCE / Criminology, Crime and criminology, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Violence in Society, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Media Studies, Cultural and media studies, Victimology and victims of crime
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'True crime has been largely ignored by criminologists to date but this concise but comprehensive study will change all of that. It examines every aspect of the genre relevant to the social sciences, including vicarious thrills, digital culture and femicide. A key text for everyone researching or studying critical, cultural or narrative criminology.' Rafe McGregor, Edge Hill University

Ian Cummins is Senior Lecturer in the School of Health and Society at the University of Salford.

Martin King is an independent scholar and author.

Louise Wattis is Assistant Professor at Northumbria University.

1. Introduction

Part 1: Exploring True Crime

2. A Short History of True Crime

3. Ethics and True Crime

4. True Crime and Punishment

Part 2: Case Studies

5. Norman Mailer’s The Executioner’s Song

6. British Serial Killers on Screen

7. Darkness Doubled: The Bundy Myth

8. Fear of Masks: The Crimes of Peter Sutcliffe

9. True Crime/True Detective

10. True Crime and News Representations of a Femicide in Bulgaria: Narratives of Conspiracy and State Corruption - Katerina Gachevska

11. Lucy Letby: The Vanilla Killer

12. Conclusion