None of This Is True: A Novel

Although the true crime genre has existed in literature for hundreds of years, it regained prominence, and became more mainstream, with the publication of Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood in 1965. With this work, which he called a “nonfiction novel,” Capote pushed the genre into a new space that combined non-fiction with fictional features, relating the compelling tale of the murder of four family members on a remote farm in Kansas. In 1974, Vincent Bugliosi published Helter Skelter, a true crime book about Charles Manson, which cemented the mainstream success of the genre and remains the best-selling true crime book to date.

With the recent advent of the podcast, the true crime genre gained new momentum. True-crime podcasts exploded in popularity during the 2000s and spawned a corresponding growth of the true-crime documentary. Netflix in particular capitalized on this popularity by rushing to offer a wide range of true crime documentaries, and Jewell’s novel wryly acknowledges this trend by using the premise of a fictional Netflix true-crime documentary (what the fictional advertisement refers to as a “podumentary”) to frame her primary plotline about the making of a podcast gone wrong. Thus, although her own novel is firmly based in fiction alone, Jewell appropriates the conventions of the true crime genre to create a more complex narrative, as well as to generate increased tension and dramatic irony. Her use of the genre’s narrative trappings therefore allows her to tell a portion of the story through fictional “interviews” that take place long after the main events that drive the plot of the novel.

The goal of a true-crime documentary is to investigate a real-life crime by filming the crew’s investigation as it unfolds through research, interviews, photographs, film, and other documentary materials. These investigations can feature recent crimes, or even go back hundreds of years to explore compelling “cold cases,” or crimes that have never been solved. Most commonly, true crime documentaries revolve around murder, but they also venture into investigations of kidnappings and robberies. The tone of the documentaries themselves range widely from sensational and speculative to serious and journalistic. Defining features of the genre include a significant level of specific detail, along with the use of real names, places, and events in the narrative.

For this reason, some critics find the genre’s invasive nature to be inherently problematic, for the privacy of survivors and others connected to the cases can be revealed without their consent, and the argument can be made that their trauma is being exploited for the purposes of entertainment. Upon a true crime documentary’s release, survivors are also forced to relive traumatic events, and they often find that the finished product differs significantly from their own experience, sacrificing an essential element of truth in order to reshape the narrative to appeal to a broader audience. Another problematic ethical consideration can be found in the tendency of such documentaries to portray murderers in a more sympathetic light. For example, documentaries such as Dahmer and Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes created a furor because they cast popular actors like Zac Efron in the role of the killer, thereby creating a subculture of fans who admire the criminals by extension.

In this context, Jewell creates an incisive psychological thriller whose very title is designed to both signal the story’s fictional nature while also raising questions as to the veracity of the entire true crime genre. Within the pages of None of This Is True, many of the ethical and contextual issues of the true crime genre are explored and critiqued in depth, for as Alix notes at the end of the novel, “as is so often the way for true crime podcasts like these, there is no real closure, no real THE END” (353). Unlike traditional fictional crime narratives, in which the answers are clear-cut and criminals captured and punished, Jewell’s novel mimics the conventions of true-crime mysteries that often go unsolved. Yet just as this element of uncertainty does not diminish the popularity of the true crime genre, Jewell’s novel also reaps the benefits that come from creating a story with many unfinished threads that allow readers to speculate on just where the truth might lie.