We’re starting this week of Best Evidence’s Year in Review (our fourth annual!) by looking back on the genre with our favorite vintage and old true crime documentaries, books, podcasts, and more we discovered this year. (Feeling like something more recent? Then check out our lists of the best documentaries, longreads, podcasts, books, and dramatic adaptations for 2024.)
True crime is one of those genres that doesn’t always age well. (Sarah, who runs a true crime bookstore specalizing in classic titles, knows this better than any of us.) But there are always properties that stand the test of time, while still others obsess and attract by just how out of time they are. Either way, we had a blast with the vintage true crime we listed below. But how about you? What non-2024 true crime were you glued to or telling folks about this year? As always, the comments are ready for your answers.
Note: When a book mentioned below is available at Sarah’s Exhibit B bookstore, I have linked to it in the entry. That’s not why we do this, but we do appreciate your support of her small business!
IN BROAD DAYLIGHT by Harry MacLean — Elon Green, author of The Man Nobody Killed: Life, Death, and Art in Michael Stewart’s New York (coming on March 11, 2025)
I set a goal to read 24 books I already owned in 2024 (I’m on track to complete by December 31) and several of these were older true crime properties. Some very readable and engaging deep cuts that stood out: Last Rampage: The Shocking True Story of an Escaped Convict by James W. Clarke and Alice and Gerald: A Homicidal Love Story by Ron Franscell. (Buy at Exhibit B.)— Susan Howard, Best Evidence contributor (Instagram: @veronicamers)
The Return of Martin Guerre from 1982, AKA the one they based Sommersby on. Look, I only have love in my heart for Sommersby – RIP to when Hollywood stars made big earnest soapy romance stories – but the French flick it’s based on is nothing like it. Starring walking true crime case Gérard Depardieu, it’s about a real life case of identity theft from a small village in the middle of the 1600s. There’s not a lot of romance (don’t worry, there’s lots of sex), but as this is one of the most famous court cases in French history there’s a vivid depiction of the importance of authenticity, and how filmsy a thing reputation is. Nothing too topical there, then.— Margaret Howie, co-founder of Space Fruit Press
No Visible Bruises by Rachel Louise Snyder, a standout and necessary investigative look at intimate partner violence that is also gripping and impossible to put down. It also made me feel less alone at a point when I really, really needed it. — Sarah Weinman, author & editor
I have been thinking a lot about how policing can or should look in post-2020 America, and I’m sure I’m not alone. The system is broken—I don’t think even the most Fox News among us would disagree (but who knows! Wild times.)—but necessary (definitely room for debate there!). It feels like such a mess that it’s easier to ignore the whole thing until something terrible happens that we can gripe about on Instagram then forget. Published in the post-defund, then defund backlash era of 2023, An Inconvenient Cop: My Fight To Change Policing In America doesn’t offer a quick fix to the matter, but it certainly gives us some ideas of steps we can take to help policing align with normal human values. Written by NYPD whistleblower Edwin Raymond in partnership with veteran ghostwriter Jon Sternferd, it’s also a gripping, The Shield-like yarn. (Buy at Exhibit B.) — Eve Batey, Best Evidence co-editor, journalist, and sighthound person.
American Prison by Shane Bauer. (Buy at Exhibit B.) — Sarah D. Bunting, co-EIC of B.E., proprietrix of Exhibit B. Books
With the reopening of Notre-Dame de Paris this month, 2022’s NOTRE-DAME ON FIRE deserves a revisit. Using archival footage for the exteriors and contemporaneous news coverage, with incredible reenactments by a mixture of actors and the people who were there that day in 2019, it is a stunning document of the events, and the personal and national effect of the fire. It tells both the intimate stories and the disaster-movie thrill ride with impressive visuals and succinct narrative drive. — Sarah Carradine, co-host of the Crime Seen podcast
I may risk any credibility by admitting that I only just read The Journalist and the Murderer, by Janet Malcolm. When I was an undergraduate, my j-school friends wouldn’t stop talking about this take on the journalistic ethics of Joe McGinniss and Fatal Vision, so I figured I basically knew what it was about without having to actually read it. Well, I was wrong. Even if “Joe McGinniss isn’t a paragon of journalist ethics” seems like the coldest of takes today, Malcolm goes well past that into an examination of the ethics of the journalistic enterprise as a whole that might be more scathing now than it was then. (Buy at Exhibit B.) — Dan Cassino, Professor of Government and Politics at Fairleigh Dickinson University
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Eve Batey is (with Sarah D. Bunting) the co-founder of Best Evidence. She’s a former deputy managing editor at the San Francisco Chronicle, was once the editor of Eater SF, and is currently a contributor to Vanity Fair (among other publications). You can find her on Instagram as @evelb or send pitches, tips, and fan mail to [email protected].
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