Crime Lately
I've been really into crime lately. Murders in particular.
Meaning, true crime, real crime, but not my own crimes.
I've been into a few television shows lately, and a pattern has emerged. On A&E, which used to stand for Arts and Entertainment and is now pretty much reality programming up the yin-yang, manages to host the two best crime shows on television.
Cold Case Files has been around for a long time now, at least four or five years, and hosted by Bill Kurtis, who I recently discovered was also the show's producer and more of a creative force behind it than just that wonderfully dramatic voice, narrating the stories, the show focuses on interesting cases that were revived after initially "going cold". I have seen several stories on this throughout the years that have been quite fascinating. The show is well-produced and lacks the vindictiveness of tone that hurts some shows that further "criminalize" their criminals, judging them beyond simply catching them. Not all episodes live up to this, but the best ones tend to. They have excellent production values, dramatic though sometimes demure crime scene photos, and a very good judge of quality content.
The First 48, is a newer show, which I only discovered about a year ago, though it is on it's fifth season. This show follows different detectives as they research and try to solve a murder in "the first 48 hours". The premise is simple, that if detectives do not get a solid lead in the first 48 hours of an investigation, their chances of solving the murder and cut in half. The show usually has two narratives, following two different investigations in different states, without any real attempt to draw them together. The investigators that they have worked with are tough and interesting and follwing them through the process of investigation and interrogation is truly remarkable. Again, these guys aren't the tough-talking "hard on crime" types from COPS or America's Most Wanted, but rather realistic folks doing their jobs. Sometimes the stories follow beyond the first 48, but most of them, even if they get a lead and make a solid arrest, or even get a confession, do not follow through the court system. But it is a fascinating show about which I wish that I knew more.
For instance, how do they sort through the crimes to decide which ones air? The bulk of the murders tend to be African-American or Latino. Does this reflect the stories that they were able to follow because people have signed waivers? Or is this genuinely reflective of the racial breakdown of the murders in the area? I have had these questions about COPS as well over the years. But this show really is interesting on a lot of levels. The production values and style are good, too. It's seriously a great show. But I have a hard time figuring out when it's on.
The A&E site itself isn't the greatest for finding the types of information that I would like, though it does provide a schedule of upcoming showings.
The second tier of shows that I have been into are all on Court TV: Forensic Files, a workman-like forensic science show with lower production values than the A&E shows, but solid and seemingly endless in the array of episodes. I've only caught a couple of episodes of North Mission Road, which is a show about the Los Angeles City Coroner's office. The couple of shows that I caught were very good. Suburban Secrets has proved pretty good, as have Body of Evidence: From the Case Files of Dale Hinman (one of the country's leading forensic profilers), and rounded out with L.A. Forensics which sounds like the same deal as North Mission Road but isn't as well-made or interesting and The Investigators, which I actually don't feel like I care for as much. There are other shows on there, and I have to say that when I am slumming it, I will watch Psychic Detectives, which is pretty hokey but reasonably entertaining. Court TV also airs a lot of shows with car crashes and video of crimes in action...I hate those. I don't even like the incessant commercials for them.
But they don't play those forensics shows on Discovery anymore, at least as far as I can tell, so what are you going to do?
But I also recently stumbled on William Roughead, a writer who documented true crimes of his era: 1870-1950's, writing for "the signet" in Scotland, he also wrote narratives about famous crimes of times past, meticulously researched and written with something that can certainly be called "aplomb". The quote from the New York Times on the back of the book reads: "The cornerstone of any library of crime," which was certainly a selling point for me. It's such a different era and understanding of science, psychology, and detection, also rising through the modern world of crime. He has a wonderful sense of narrative, weaving the stories superbly, certainly enhancing the art of the treatment more than any of these televsion documentaries.
I read a lot of crime fiction from the 20th century and as recently as last year became totally fascinated with the crime literature of the 19th century as well. I have a relatively good library of fiction and feel fairly well in depth in this topic. But Roughead is something altogether different, and pleasurably surprising. But somehow, reading Roughead while going back and forth with the various television documentaries (note, I do not consider these "reality" television), I realized that I have a significant fascination here, something that I think ultimately I shared with my father, though I think the angles we approached it were extraordinarily different.
So what does this say about me? Well, I am not alone. There is a whole lot of people out there who probably share this fascination to an extent or to even deeper extents.
It's just something that has been coming clear to me of late, that's all.
