They sell very well, new or second-hand. They use sophisticated fiction techniques, but can be just as graphic as the trashy paperback writers. Kerry Greenwood believes that the general standard of Australian true-crime writing is rising fast. We're now getting people writing it who are good writers in their own right, and they can't make a crude and stupid account of something. More women than men buy true crime.
Publishers are also much more receptive.
Several years ago, Wilson was trying to get up a book about Robin Reid and Paul Luckman, two young men who had tortured two teenage boys and murdered one of them. On Murder also includes a piece on the Reid-Luckman case by Mark Whittaker. Occasionally, one book exemplifies all three areas. The classic is In Cold Blood , Truman Capote's reconstruction of a 1959 multiple murder that follows the lives of both the victims and the killers. It broke through the barrier between crime reportage and literature.