“You can convince anybody of anything if you just push it at them all of the time. They may not believe it 100 percent, but they will still draw opinions from it, especially if they have no other information to draw their opinions from.”

★★★★

W.W. Norton & Company | 1974

Filed Under: The folk singer with the swastika tattoo seems on the up-and-up.

Everyone and their mother knows the story of Charles Manson. Or at least the bullet points, because the bullet points are fucking insane. The evil “hippie” cult leader who brainwashed otherwise normal young people into brutally murdering pregnant actress Sharon Tate and her house guests in the Hollywood Hills in 1969.

Everyone knows the blurb. Everyone knows the images of Manson at his wildest moments. Everyone has seen, at some point, that image of three happy girls singing on their way to their murder trial with swastikas on their foreheads. Everyone knows that Sharon Tate was pregnant because it’s those kinds of headline specifics that make your stomach turn or your jaw drop.

The famous imagines and soundbites are so robust and insane and sensational and seared into pop culture by our own doing, that it led me to believe that I knew basically everything there was to know about this case. Or that I had enough of an understanding that reading this book was going to be just to say that I’d read it. It’s kind of a must for true crime fans, in my sometimes abrasive opinion.

But I was wrong.

There is so much information to be gleaned from this book by the prosecutor who convicted Manson, Vincent Bugliosi. Helter Skelter is a broad picture of Manson’s crimes, his early life and his followers that I found utterly fascinating, even if the audiobook narrator sounded like he stepped right out of Fast Talking, High Trousers.

★★½

Random House | 1966

Filed Under: How much bullshit in true crime is too much bullshit?

I have an unhealthy obsession totally normal interest in true crime. I love mystery-crime fiction. And I’m not comfortable just resting on my laurels and staying in the here-and-now. I want to know the history of the things I love. I want to develop an appreciation for those that came before and helped contribute to making these genres as accessible as they are, and as artistic as they’ve become.

I also want to be that girl who reads classic books and has a nighttime face routine and wakes up early to take her dog for a walk before making a fresh smoothie full of kale or cucumber or like, avocado toast. Whatever the healthy people are doing these days.

But if my reading experience with In Cold Blood has taught me anything it’s that I’m none of those things and classic books are boring as shit. I got out of bed this morning fifteen minutes before I needed to leave. And I don’t give a fuck.

Okay, maybe that’s a bit dramatic. I give a tiny baby of a fuck and not all classic books suck. #NotAllClassics.

Honestly, I’m super disappointed that I didn’t like this. I feel like I should have. It’s almost a rite of passage to read this book if you’re in the murderino scene. It’s so popular and has all those keywords on the cover – “spell-binding”, “masterpiece…”

WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME? This book is giving me an extensional crisis.

In Cold Blood was written over a period of seven years and published in 1966. It was not the first true crime book ever written, but it is the first to bring the true-crime genre to mainstream culture. Capote created the blueprint. He’s a trailblazer.

And I didn’t like it?! I DIDN’T LIKE IT.