Blood and Ink: An International Guide to Fact-Based Crime Literature

The interplay between crime fact and crime fiction can be detected back to literature's earliest beginnings. True crime has long been the basis of many plots of memorable literature - from Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter" to Jean Genet's play "The Maids", there has often been blood on the page. This guide to "fact-based crime literature" focuses on two principal groups of works: non-fictional accounts of crimes and criminal trials, including essays, monographs, journalism, editions of court transcripts, prison histories, and criminal and police biographies; and works of imaginative literature, such as novels, stories or stage works, based on or inspired by actual crimes or criminals.