True Crime in England - a thing?!

MarkEsq

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An interesting project has popped up, a childhood friend of mine turns out to be the Det. Chief Inspector who just solved a 32-year old crime. She's interested in seeing a book written about it but doesn't want to write it herself. It's right in my wheelhouse so I'm thinking about it.

Now, I know true crime is big here in the US but what about in the UK? There are so few murders there, I didn't know whether that meant more or less interest in true crime.

Thanks for any opinions!
 

mirandashell

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Ermmm.... yeah.... :D

I wish we had so few murders. We kill each other quite a lot, we just don't tend to do it with a gun.

And yes, as OSG said, there's a huge market for true crime. Especially cold cases.
 

Twick

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Britain's sort of the birthplace of true crime writing. For example, in 1827 Thomas de Quincey published "On Murder Considered as one of the Fine Arts".
 

neandermagnon

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So few! :Ssh:

I used to work as a bookseller and can confirm, yes, there is a UK market for true crime.

Ermmm.... yeah.... :D

I wish we had so few murders. We kill each other quite a lot, we just don't tend to do it with a gun.

And yes, as OSG said, there's a huge market for true crime. Especially cold cases.

My thoughts exactly... so few murders... um, yeah... lol

Yeah there's a huge market for that kind of thing over here. We've had more than our fair share of twisted mass murderers. We just have sensible gun laws so people don't randomly shoot each other very often. But things like digging up seemingly peaceful suburban homes and finding lots of bodies... yeah, that happens.
 

neandermagnon

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Good ole Midsomer. A true puzzle for all statisticians. :greenie




Quite a lot of people die in bizarre accidents in Ramsay Street though...
 

mccardey

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Generally true crime in England leads to more pommies in Australia. That's not a bad thing, it's just a thing.
 

Albedo

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I have a theory that Ramsay Street, Summer Bay, Walford, Melrose Place, etc. are all built over foci of the ancient drama-field that permeates the Earth. People dwelling over these foci have a much greater chance than others of being caught up in adulterous affairs, murders, explosions, and all sorts of dramatic goings-on.
 

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There's a reasonable market for true crime in England, just as there is in the rest of the UK. From what I remember it's not usually a very lucrative market sector as it's not usual for such books to leap onto the bestseller lists: but it is there. It's quite similar to the "hard lives" sector, though, which is definitely in decline, compared to where it was several years ago.

If you're interested in writing about it remember that non-fiction is usually sold on proposal. You don't need to write the whole thing in order to get a deal. But also remember that true crimes have true victims, who have real families, and there are often legal matters associated with them which make publishing anything without the backup of a major publisher very risky. Take care.
 

steveb47

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An interesting project has popped up, a childhood friend of mine turns out to be the Det. Chief Inspector who just solved a 32-year old crime. She's interested in seeing a book written about it but doesn't want to write it herself. It's right in my wheelhouse so I'm thinking about it.

Now, I know true crime is big here in the US but what about in the UK? There are so few murders there, I didn't know whether that meant more or less interest in true crime.

Thanks for any opinions!

"So few murders?" Really? Maybe compared with the US and the bobbies are still in the main unarmed, but the UK has its murder black spots and most of them are drug-related. Yes, we do have a drug problem too :)

I hope you appreciate the Brit humour (not humor). There is a big market in the UK for true crime and not just for books, but also docudramas. Hope that helps.
 

williemeikle

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Your thread title says England, your question in the first topic says UK. Is it just England, or the whole of the UK you're talking about?

True Crime can be a big seller. The Moors Murders books in the past especially, or Charles Bronson's bio, or anything about the Krays. It helps if it was a big case, one that was in the news in papers and on TV. Smaller cases aren't so much in the public eye and might not interest a publisher so much.
 

frimble3

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Not really relevant to what's selling now, but the first 'true crime' story that I ever read was about the 'Brides in the Bath' murders, about 40 years ago. I don't remember much, except a rather vivid scene where the investigators almost drowned a police-woman while trying to reconstruct how the murders were done.