Crime scene investigation

Some crime authors have written about real crimes to put right an injustice, or to examine events that have personally affected them. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, for instance, was involved in several campaigns to reform the law and clear the names of the unjustly accused, and the noir writer James Ellroy, best known for L.A. Confidential , examined the murder of his own mother in My Dark Places. Some crime writers have also turned detective and tried to solve some of the great causes celebres. However, the results reveal more about the differences between real crime and writing about it than they do about the actual crimes.

The perfect murder(s)

Unsurprisingly, the Jack the Ripper murders have attracted dozens of writers to offer up their own conclusions. The killings are perfect for a crime writer: they are lurid and well-documented, and nobody concerned is likely to sue for libel. In Case Closed: the Ripper Murders Solved , the American novelist Patricia Cornwell, creator of the