Covering Darkness: Writing True Crime

Covering Darkness explores the wide-ranging genre of true crime writing, analyses the surprising literary lineage with a variety of writers, many of the highest quality, who have dedicated themselves and dabbled in true crime over the past four centuries until Truman Capote published the groundbreaking In Cold Blood in the mid-1960s.

The book also analyses the key elements for effective true crime narrative writing, and the wider ethical implications and sensitivities unique to the genre. Finally, it offers insights into fifteen of the best true crime writers since the 1960s and their seminal works in the Modern Masters section, taking in the different subject matters, approaches, styles and methods of those leading practitioners in both book and feature writing forms.

True crime is under-represented in literary criticism, and this book aims to act as both a primer and critical guide to the very best on offer as well as looking into the key elements which make it so.