Harold Schechter
Harold Schechter is Professor Emeritus at Queens College, the City University of New York, where he taught American literature for 42 years. His essays on crime, psychopathology and media violence have appeared in many newspapers and magazines, including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times and the International Herald Tribune. He has written for network television (Law & Order) and been featured as an expert on PBS’ History Detectives, as well as various shows on cable channels, including Investigation Discovery, A & E Biography and Court TV. Among his more than 40 published books are a series of historical true-crime narratives about America’s most infamous serial killers, several encyclopaedic works (The A to Z Encyclopedia of Serial Killers, The Serial Killers Files, Psycho USA: Famous American Killers You Never Heard Of), and an anthology of American true-crime writing published by the Library of America. He is a two-time Edgar Award nominee. His most recent book is Murderabilia: A History of Crime in 100 Objects, published in 2023.
First true-crime book
The earliest surviving example of English-language true-crime writing is The Triumphs of God's Revenge Against the Crying and Execrable Sinne of (Wilful and Premeditated) Murther, published in six instalments (and a collected edition) between 1621 and 1635. The books were the work of Englishman John Reynolds (c.1588–1655), who penned sensational and lurid stories of murder and violence under the pious pretext of illustrating the terrible wages of sin.
As was common for books of this era, the full title was extremely long, covering the modern roles of both a book's title and its back-cover description. What's actually written on the title page is the following:
The Triumphs of God's Revenge Against the Crying and Execrable Sinne of (Wilful and Premeditated) Murther: With His miraculous discoveries, and severe punishment thereof: in thirty severall tragical histories; ... Never published or imprinted in any other language. Histories which contain great variety of mournful and memorable accidents, historical, moral, and divine: very necessary to restrain and deter us from the bloody sin which in these our daies makes so ample and large a progression. With a table, of all the severall letters and challenges contained in the whole six books written by John Reynolds. The fourth edition. Whereunto are added the lively pourtaictures of the severall persons, and resemblances of other passages mentioned therein, engraven in copper plates
Although the factual basis of these stories is questionable, Reynolds maintains in his preface that they are all true, saying "I must further advertise thee, that I have purposely fetched these Tragical Histories from forreign parts […] For mine own part, I have illustrated and polished these Histories, yet not framed them according to the Model of mine own fancies".
The books were popular best-sellers during Reynolds' lifetime, and their graphic descriptions of betrayal, violence and death were an important influence on the notoriously bloody theatre of the early- to mid-17th century. The Changeling, a 1622 tragedy by Thomas Middleton and William Rowley, was an adaptation of one of Reynolds' first Tragical Histories. It was also an important early influence on what would become the English "Murder Pamphlet" and "Broadside Ballad", cheaply printed, sensationalized accounts of prominent crimes.