Virtual "Murder, In Fact" Book Signing
Last week, I had the opportunity to attend a Zoom book talk presented by Lana Whited, PhD, English professor at Ferrum College in Virginia. I was primarily interested in attending because Lana and I were colleagues and friends at Ferrum in the early '90's (we did a lot of our interacting as founding members of an organization we called Women on Campus). But I was also quite interested in the book itself, Murder, In Fact: Disillusionment and Death in the American True Crime Novel. I really appreciated hearing Lana's academic presentation on the history of the true crime novel (and began to learn the differences between Realistic and Naturalistic fiction). With the exception of a long-ago required undergraduate class, I haven't formally studied literature. I have over the years read several of the books in her analysis; the most memorable ones for me were An American Tragedy by Theorore Dreiser (haunting) and In Cold Blood by Truman Capote (incredibly well crafted). I...