It’s an oft-repeated adage that ‘crime doesn’t pay’, but true crime certainly does. True crime is a booming industry as new Netflix dramas, documentaries, and podcasts constantly drop, with the top earners – such as the podcasts My Favourite Murder and True Crime Obsessed – making millions each year. But more and more people are questioning our appetite for these grisly tales, whether it’s OK to have a favourite serial killer, and the ethics of profiting from other people’s suffering and death.

Eliza Clark’s second novel Penance dives deep into the world of true crime fandoms and how crime narratives are crafted, through the shocking murder of a teenage girl by her peers in a small seaside town on the eve of the Brexit referendum. Through the machinations of her unreliable narrator and the ever-shifting accounts of the girls themselves, Clark weaves a gripping tale that leads readers through podcast transcripts, text messages, interviews and Tumblr posts to show how stories become truth and explore the fraught space of teenage friendships and fandom as they collide with true crime.

Ahead of the book’s release, we spoke to Clark about Penance, the murky world of serial killer fandoms, and the ethics of the true crime genre.

What made you want to look at true crime and its fandom in a novel?

Eliza Clark: I suppose I was just generally interested in it. Originally, I wanted to write Penance as this fake true crime thing, because there was this case I was particularly interested in. Then as I started reading more high-quality true crime, as well as listening to more slightly dubious podcasts that were engaged with a lot of the muddier areas around true crime, my relationship with the genre shifted a lot. I wanted to do something more critical.

Penance is made up of different kinds of media. It’s set in the fictional town of Crow-on-Sea around the time of the Brexit referendum, with nonfiction elements woven in. Did that form and style come first or did writing about true crime sort of lend itself to that form? Or did it just sort of all come together naturally?

Eliza Clark: It all came together gradually. It took me quite a long time to write Penance compared to Boy Parts. But also, I did want to do something more formally ambitious. I wanted to prove that I could do something very different to Boy Parts, to myself and to readers.

I consider the town history stuff to be quite important. When I’ve been researching, that’s the stuff that often stuck out to me as particularly interesting and quite important context to really give you a proper overall view of a crime. I was actually quite conscious about using Brexit, conscious of being seen to be trying to write a Brexit novel. My decision to [set it at the same time as the referendum] was actually related to the Suzanne Capper murder that Penance is roughly based on. That happened in the Greater Manchester area but about six months after the Jamie Bulger murder. It was this very violent killing of a teenage girl by a group of teenagers and one adult woman, which got no media coverage because it coincided with the Jamie Bulger trials. I thought it was really interesting that something this terrible could happen and it could be completely eclipsed [in the media] because something else terrible had happened. There’s this idea that we’ve only got room for so many terrible news stories at once.

Penance looks at the more extreme true crime fandom space, where people might write fanfiction about serial killers or school shooters. What made you want to look at that rather than just the more mainstream podcasts or YouTube side?

Eliza Clark: I listened to a podcast series about a woman called Lindsay Savannah Wrath who plotted a mass shooting but didn’t actually go ahead with it, and was very involved in that side of Tumblr but in an edgy, semi-ironic-not-really-ironic way. I think those spaces are interesting because they are demonstrative of this extreme and quite inappropriate empathy that teenagers can have. It’s the kind of projection people engage in within fandom spaces taken to an extreme. Writing fanfiction would not really be that odd if my character was doing it about Harry Potter or something, but it is when they’re doing it about school shooters. I’m interested in the way people, especially young people, will project onto fictional characters or even real people to explore their own trauma and feelings.

“I don’t think you’re an awful person if you’re interested in true crime. It is interesting. I’m interested in it [...] It’s just a prurient interest, but it’s fine to have prurient interests” – Eliza Clark

You mentioned people taking part in serial killer fandoms in an ironic way, but it’s often difficult to work out what is ironic online: when is someone doing a bit or making fun of something and what is serious engagement with a belief, subculture or discourse.

Eliza Clark: I think irony-posting and irony-poisoned internet use are really interesting social features. It links back to this idea of ‘corrupted play’: Ikuya Satō in his book Kamikaze Biker looked at teenage biker gangs in Tokyo, and he talked about this idea of corrupted play, where you go from being a teenage boy roleplaying as the kind of person who could rob someone at knifepoint to eventually becoming someone who robs someone at knifepoint. I think you can see a lot of that in this kind of irony-posting on the internet. I don’t think you could play at doing something for an extended period without crossing the line to just doing it at a certain point. 

There’s a lot more work coming out in the past year or so about true crime as a phenomenon, whether that’s novels or nonfiction. How did you want or see Penance fitting into that discussion, or did it fit into this discussion more organically?

Eliza Clark: It was more organic because I’ve been writing the novel for so long that my own opinions have changed alongside the cultural zeitgeist. Especially since we’re now witnessing the Netflixification of true crime. It was one thing when it was a niche community, and it’s another now that it’s this mainstream multi-million-dollar industry. It’s a conversation that I’m glad I’m part of and to a degree the timing is convenient for Penance. But it does also feed into one of the things about true crime that I struggle with the most, especially in podcasts, where the discussion of these cases is broken up with advertising for toothbrushes and mattresses and it’s made very clear that it’s all for profit. So, I guess I feel a bit weird about the convenience of the cultural discussion for me and Penance. But who knows, maybe the novel will flop and I won’t need to feel guilty then.

It’s an interest and I think it’s an interest that is fine to have. I don’t think you’re an awful person if you’re interested in true crime. It is interesting. I’m interested in it. I was concerned about this attempt to frame it as a kind of feminist interest. It’s just a prurient interest, but it’s fine to have prurient interests. I’m quite uncomfortable with people requiring a strict moral framework to consume and enjoy media but at the same time I wish people would apply more of a moral framework to true crime, particularly the kind of weekly content farm podcast where you have to find another case to get listeners so you can get the money from the toothbrush company.

The way people will try and pursue truth and the lengths people will go to to do so is often quite ruthless and jarring. That was something I found fascinating in Penance, this idea of how far can you really have a ‘truth’ about a crime like this, especially when there are multiple people involved. 

Eliza Clark: I’m interested in unreliable narrators and the control the narrator has over a story and how you are only ever hearing that person’s version of things because of this control. It’s a troubling drive people have to try and find out the ‘correct’ answer. Life often isn’t that way and it’s interesting that the good true crime stuff I’ve read isn’t really seeking these answers, they’re just exploring it and often the endings are very unsatisfying. I really appreciate those stories and those journalists that don’t necessarily seek to stick a neat conclusion on it. 

There’s recently been a really good analysis of the Bible John case called We All Go Into The Dark by Francisco Garcia, which looks at how people were so driven for answers about these three awful murders in Glasgow that this serial killer was created by the media out of nowhere, and these three canonical murders attached to him. The question of ‘who is Bible John?’ is a more intriguing question than ‘why are potentially three different men in our community doing this to women they’ve met on nights out?’ One of those questions has a clear, comforting answer and the other is very upsetting and unsettling but is potentially more important to think about. The narrator of my novel manages to paint quite a neat picture in the end and I liked the idea of pulling that away and saying ‘look, everything you’ve read has potentially been bollocks’. 

If people read Penance and really enjoy discussion of the true crime phenomenon or industry, what would you recommend them to read or watch if they want to understand more?

Eliza Clark: Definitely Rachel Munroe’s Savage Appetites and Francisco Garcia’s We All Go Into the Dark. There is a really fabulous book about the Raoul Moat incident called You Could Do Something Amazing With Your Life (You Are Raoul Moat) by Andrew Hankinson. And if people are looking for something else fictional there’s a really fantastic web comic by Max Graves, a really interesting trans comic artist – the first part of it is called Dog Names. It’s a character study of a teen boy who was caught up in a murder and he’s also chronically online and won’t get off Tumblr. I read it shortly after I finished Penance and was just blown away by how fresh and how interesting it is. I think someone should give him loads and loads of money for it.

Penance is published by Faber & Faber on July 6th and is available to preorder now.

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