Crime, Fear and the Law in True Crime Stories

by Anita Biressi

Overview

Why do true crime stories exert such popular fascination? What do they have to say about the fear of crime in the present moment? This book examines the historical origins and development of true crime and its evolution into distinctive contemporary forms. Embracing a range of non-fiction accounts - true crime book and magazines, law and order television, popular journalism - it traces how they harness and explore current concerns about law and order, crime and punishment and personal vulnerability.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780333745472
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan UK
Publication date:	06/26/2001
Series:	Crime Files
Edition description:	2001
Pages:	238
Product dimensions:	5.51(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.03(d)
Lexile:	1460L (what's this?)

About the Author

ANITA BIRESSI is a Lecturer in Media Studies at the Department of Arts and Media, Buckinghamshire Chilterns University College.

Table of Contents

Preface Acknowledgements PART ONE: TRUE CRIME: ISSUES, HISTORIES, CONTEXTS Introduction 'True Stories Only' Histories of True Crime Discourses of Law and Order in Modern Britain PART TWO: TRUE CRIME: STORIES, BODIES, CRIMINALS Crime Magazine Stories: From American Idiom to an English Vernacular Period True Crime: History from Below? Daring to Know: Looking at the Body in the New True Crime Magazine Figure in a Landscape: The Dangerous Individual in Criminal Biography Bibliography Index