The search begins as a form of religious history, but the religious concern so dominant in the earlier narratives becomes quieter and quieter as the language of sinfulness is replaced by the language of 19th century gothic horror. Mass. They have the collection of the leading bibliographer of American murder literature before 1900. I would go there and spend a week to three months at a time, reading these. When I first started the project, looking for changes in attitudes toward human evil, I did start with fiction. I looked at classic gothic fiction in the late 18th century and early 19th century.
Gothic fiction arises so quickly and suddenly from nowhere.
I needed a body of literature that started before gothic fiction, which started in the 1760s. Today, we can barely conceive of a murder without the idea of mystery. But this wasn't always so. The answer to the change is theological. In the early 18th century, in a world where God sees all and knows all, there was less mystery to murder.