A Thread of Violence

This was a thoughtful true crime story that was keenly aware of the problematic nature of true crime stories. I'm sure some people will not like the connections the author makes with his personal life but it does seem like that sort of six degrees of whoever happens a lot in Ireland with it being a relatively small country.

I think that the way that the author approaches talking about the victims is an interesting one. He says that the current trend in true crime is to go deep into victims' lives to make sure that the murderer isn't the “star” of the book, reminding readers that the victims were real people with hopes and dreams before their death. He sort of takes the angle that victims still deserve privacy and, to my interpretation, filling in so many details of their lives is still exploitative. It gave me a lot of think about and as a true crime readers/consumer, I do appreciate (some) writers interrogating the genre and being really thoughtful about it.