The Lure of the Sensational Murder

In the last decade, a new stream of scholarship has emerged in the history of American crime and criminality: the study of sensationalized murder stories. This review of the recent literature focuses upon three particular books---Patricia Cline Cohen's The Murder of Helen Jewett, Karen Halttunen's Murder Most Foul, and Virginia McConnell's Arsenic Under the Elms---while considering a number of other works published in the last decade. The reviewer argues that this is a deceptively broad field, and that each work has strengths and weaknesses. Cases studies like Cohen's Murder of Helen Jewett are riveting, creating a rich and nuanced portrait of a historical moment. But they cannot so easily explore important changes in culture and society over time. Broader works center upon significant transitions in American life, but emphasize varying sides of those transitions. Halttunen's Murder Most Foul emphasizes changes in the American mind in regard to crime stories, for instance, whereas Daniel Cohen's Pillars of Salt is centered more upon social and cultural change. Altogether this is a rich and rewarding new vein of scholarship in the history of American crime and culture.