Welcome to this week’s A-B-C of Writing True Stories newsletter.
I write this week fresh from my appearance at CrimeCon UK, the world’s number one true crime festival.
The event took over several floors of the Leonardo Royal Hotel near St Paul’s Cathedral in London, and included talks and presentations and podcasts by many well known writers, researchers, psychologists, police officers and criminologists.
Those you would have heard of?
Well, there was Colin Sutton, the detective who caught serial killer Levi Bellfield and author of the Manhunt books, currently dramatised on ITV starring Martin Clunes. There were writers Lynda la Plante, Neil Lancaster, and Carol Ann Lee (White House Farm). And there were journalists such as Anita Rani, Dermot Murnaghan, John Sweeney and forensic psychologist Kerry Daynes.
Writing historical true crime
I hadn’t realised quite how big the true crime community was. And I discovered many fans of the genre also want to write it.
Truly there is a huge demand for true stories of this nature.
I spoke about ‘Exhuming the past: Writing historical true crime’ with Daniel Smith, author of the excellent The Peer and the Gangster about the 1960s scandal and cover-up involving Lord Boothby and Ronnie Kray.
There were a number of questions from the audience about the practicalities of writing true crime. Speaking to people afterwards at the book signing, it was clear how many were true crime authors in waiting.
One woman was a fashion journalist from London who was working on a book about a case that overlapped with her day job. Another book-buyer was a criminology academic who was working on a number of true crime book ideas. Yet another audience member was a historical researcher who worked at Scotland Yard’s crime museum.
One of the burning questions they asked was around the ethics of raking up the past and approaching relatives or descendants of victims.
A good question.
And one I will pick up in next week’s newsletter.
But if ever you needed evidence of the interest in true crime, CrimeCon UK was it.