The Landscape of Canadian Women's Crime Fiction

Tag: true-crime

  • Hallie Rubenhold’s The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper

    Hallie Rubenhold’s The Five shifts the focus from the shadowy figure of the 1888 Whitechapel serial killer who came to be known as Jack the Ripper to the women he murdered. The Five is a deeply researched social history. Rubenhold isn’t interested in trying to identify the killer or in delving into the gruesome details…

  • Rachel Monroe’s Savage Appetites: Four True Stories of Women, Crime, and Obsession

    I came across Monroe’s book while seeking comps (comparable titles) for my own work-in-progress, which is a bibliomemoir: a life story told through reading and, in my case, crime fiction. It’s an expanding genre, and I highly recommend Guardian culture writer Lucy Mangan’s excellent Bookworm and Bookish. Other examples include Austen Years: A Memoir in…

  • On Teaching (and Not Teaching) True Crime in Creative Nonfiction

    My second CNF course is underway, and the class members are enthusiastic and engaged. We’ve just started the essay, both lyric and personal, and students are enjoying sharing their favourite David Sedaris pieces. But we’ve also just learned of a tragic death in our college community, and I’m feeling jolted back to last winter, when…