Sarah Weinman does an excellent job of finding true crime stories that highlight the victims, rather than focusing and glorifying the perpetrators. An interesting take on the crime anthology.

https://apps.npr.org/best-books/#year=2020&book=268

Born of the post-Serial boom of investigative and reflective true crime, Unspeakable Acts brings together 13 articles and essays that scratch our itch for grisly puzzles while interrogating our obsession with them. Sarah Weinman’s picks include propulsive narrative features like Pamela Colloff’s “The Reckoning,” following one victim for 50 years after the University of Texas tower shooting, and essays like Sarah Marshall’s “The End of Evil,” which reconsiders our tendency to view Ted Bundy as a monstrous genius. These sharp pieces challenge true-crime tropes, looking critically at the stories we want to tell ourselves about criminals and victims.

As a lover of true crime this book was fascinating to me. Very well researched and executed. If you’re a fellow lover of true crime pick this one up!

Thank you to the Publisher and Netgalley for the advanced e-reader copy. All opinions expressed are my own.

The book contains articles written on famous crimes. Is an okay read.

Thanks to the publisher for the ARC.

Well written and interesting. Well researched and detailed presentation of cases. Over all an excellent addition to the true crime genre

I'm such a big fan of Sarah Weinman's work and, like so many others, I'm true-crime-obsessed - so I absolutely devoured this book. Can't wait for the author's next book!

This was okay! I guess I wasn't expecting it to be a collection of articles, so that was sort of a letdown considering I had already read at least three of the articles.

As someone who loves true crime podcasts this book was fascinating to me. I loved the writing style and couldn’t put it down once I started it.

More sociology and cultural critique than true crime in places, but incredibly thought-provoking about why humans are so interested in true crime.

I found several of the essays included in this collection to be informative. Several of the cases discussed were unfamiliar to me. I enjoyed this collection for the most part.

Thoughtful, wide-ranging essays that will challenge and reshape the views of anyone who consumes crime fiction or nonfiction regularly.

This is one that I just opened back up and read a little bit at a time. I've always been fascinated by the things that people will choose to do to each other. The why and the how of it always vie for importance in my head. This little anthology showed that the world has caught up with me and my fascination for true crime. We are no longer the freaks if we are interested in the human psyche! Really good read for anyone who has always had this fascination or for someone who may just be curious about the recent increase in attention to criminal behaviors and motivations.

Unspeakable Acts is an anthology of 13 previously published true crime articles. The articles range from those about murder, con men, forensic science, and gun control. I am a lover of true crime and I was really looking forward to reading this, but unfortunately I was a bit underwhelmed. One issue I had with this anthology is that pretty much all of the crimes covered are really well known and I feel have already received a lot of attention; not really adding anything new if you are already interested in true crime. I would have loved to see crimes talked about that are more obscure and less known. For example, there is an article about Gypsy Rose, I have watched and heard probably about 10 different versions of this story. There are countless documentaries and podcasts about this murder already. Another issue I had is that the organization of the anthology didn’t really make much sense. The articles in the sections didn’t really share a common theme, making the sections seem unnecessary. I did like that most of the articles seemed to be well written and the book kept me fairly entertained. I would probably recommend this to someone who isn’t very familiar with true crime as is looking to learn about some notable cases. ARC provided by Publisher via Netgalley.

True crime is such a popular genre, but it is not for everyone. In this anthology of true crime stories, the editor showcases the variety within the genre and attempts to explain its current popularity. The stories will be satisfying for voyeuristic readers and for those who are reading true crime for the first time.

This was a great collection of true crime long-form articles. I had previously read a few online on their original sources, but there were so many interesting articles that it was worth my time. I found the collection to be well put together with an interesting through-line. I would recommend this to people who love long-form articles or true crime. Great book!

Rating: 3.5 stars rounded up to 4 stars

As a huge true crime fan, I was very excited to read Unspeakable Acts. However, I was disappointed as the articles included for the popular true crime cases were of very popular cases. I found it hard to want to keep reading when I have already heard all of the same details from countless podcasts and true crime shows such as Dateline. Each of the articles that she chose were very well written and researched. I did learn some new things from one of the articles such as the true identity of author Anne Perry (mindblown) and why her case is similar to the Slenderman case.

I would have preferred some articles on cases that are not as popular as that would have brought some new eyes to cases that are not in the limelight.

Overall, I would recommend Unspeakable Acts to readers who want to get into true crime reading, but haven't listened to a lot of true crime podcasts or watched a lot of true crime documentaries.

Unspeakable Acts, edited by Sarah Weinman, is a collection of thirteen, long-form true crime pieces grouped into three categories in the book. Some of the stories are older, while some quite recent. The pieces include stories of murder, criminal investigations, missing persons, and forensic science, some of which have been in the news not too long ago and even turned into films.

Story subjects include well-known criminals such as sniper Charles Whitman, serial killer Ted Bundy and lesser-known offenders, but still notorious in their own endeavors.

Voracious readers of true crime pieces most likely will have encountered some of the included tales from other print sources, such as the Texas Monthly.

The authors included do not write with a salacious style but instead treat each tale with examination through that of serious journalism and well-crafted writing.

In a nutshell, there is a little bit of everything for anyone in the stories found in Unspeakable Acts. Also included at the end is the inclusion by Weinman of a broad list of additional reading sources, podcasts, movies, and other media outlets for even more true crime stories.

Recommend to fans of serious true-crime journalism.

Unspeakable Acts is an enjoyable collection of some of the most important true crime writing in recent memory, essays that have been spurred by the modern obsession with true crime. In her editor's note for the collection, Sarah Weinman of The Real Lolita fame critiques this boom in true crime. She credits our "true crime moment" to 2014, when the world collectively listened to the first season of the hit podcast Serial. After chronicling the major true crime hits in podcast, TV, book, and movie format, Weinman describes the ushering in of a new era in true crime reporting: a "new and fresh crop of crime writers" that are have "centered the victims as human beings rather than rely[ing] on the trope of beautiful white dead girls" and who have "paid attention to stark topics like inequality, poverty, housing, and addiction, all of which affect and are affected by crime." Weinman's collection features these writers, who don't just want to sensationalize stories of crime, but site them in their context, feature the victims, and point out patterns.

The book is divided into three sections, each of which goes further away from our typical idea of "true crime-as-entertainment." The first section is filled with stories that true crime enthusiasts know: the Gypsy Rose and DeeDee Blancharde story as popularized in The Act and Darling Rose Gold, the two young girls who stabbed their friend because Slenderman told them to, and the story of one victim from the first-ever school shooting at UT Austin (see the 2016 film Tower). Other stories are less familiar but still in this vein, and stories further down in the book explore typically unseen topics like the commonplace murders of trans people or the perspective of a Pennsylvania trauma surgeon who regularly repairs gunshot wounds.

Despite reading some stories I already knew, I have to say this book interested me quite a bit. It's refreshing to see old true crime stories told from a different perspective, and to see stories that some may not think of as "true crime" put into this category. Many of us are complicit in romanticizing these true crime stories that are all about isolated incidents, dead white girls, and sensational acts. But it's important to place crimes within their larger societal context, as many recent books have done (see Red River Girl, about the systemic murders of Indigenous girls in Canada, Killers of the Flower Moon, about murders of Osage people, or Say Nothing, which is almost more history of the Troubles than true crime). Even the third season of Serial very responsibly used its platform to report on the everyday acts of and miscarriages of justice in a regular Ohio courtroom, showing the quotidian and often inhumane ways that crime usually works.

Any fan of the genre will enjoy this collection, and hopefully it will open eyes to other forms of true crime and justice reporting that deserve as much attention as I'll Be Gone in the Dark. Thank you to HarperCollins Ecco for the ARC!

Sarah Weinman has curated an excellent collection of stories and essays, even for those true crime readers who may think they have heard it all before. Each story has a different spin or is told from a different point of view than anything you have previously read. While the facts may be familiar, there is new information, or a new angle of looking at the same facts throughout this entire collection.

Weinman has divided these tales into three separate sections: narratives, a discussion of where crime fits into current popular culture, and a broader look at the justice system in society. It is a brilliant way of organising the book to clearly get the reader to understand that no one is retelling these stories for entertainment value, but rather to use them as examples and start to look at a bigger picture, built from those individual stories.

The first section is “Narrative Features” where different true crime stories, that most everyone is familiar with, are told in a different way than we normally hear them. For instance, the feature on the University of Texas Tower shooting in the 1960’s is told from the point of view of one of the first victims that was shot that day. Having lived in Texas, and having grown up in Austin, I thought I knew the story backwards and forwards, but this is a way that I have never heard it told. Additionally, it is told within the broader scope of the survivor’s life story. Obviously her unwitting role in a famous true crime story is not the sum total of her life, and it was fascinating to see who she was before this occurred and who she became later on in life.

The second section is “Where Crime Meets Culture” and in this section the essays and stories examine different ways that crime intersects with popular culture. Sometimes good, sometimes bad, but this relatively new phenomenon is always interesting. In a discussion about the Slenderman case in Wisconsin in 2014 (which could actually be considered a case of culture meets crime, meets culture), the author looks at elements of the Salem Witch Trials, as well as the case of Pauline Parker and Juliet Hume, which was quite similar in many ways, except that it occurred 60 years earlier, in New Zealand. The case of Parker and Hume was the basis for the 1994 movie Heavenly Creatures.

This section also looks at the music video for Soul Asylum’s 1993 hit “Runaway Train” which featured actual missing children in the video. The author looks at some of the specific cases featured in the video as well as how this particular collaboration came to be. It was a strange feeling to be able to go to YouTube and find the video and see some of the images discussed in the story.

The third section of the book is “Justice and Society” and looks at a few specific issues in the justice system and how they came to be. From how new types of forensic science can spread throughout the system before they are necessarily scientifically sound, to how (and why) specific groups of people receive different treatment by the system.

Whether as a resource in writing about criminal justice issues, or for someone’s own personal education and knowledge, Sarah Weinman’s Unspeakable Acts is an excellent place to start.

Happy Pub Day to the new anthology UNSPEAKABLE ACTS. Writer Sarah Weinman compiles a collection of long-form articles about true crime. No matter how much of a junkie you are, you'll find these pieces, many from regional and local publications, fascinating and haunting.

I found the story of Claire Wilson, the 18-year-old pregnant woman who was Charles Whitman's victim in the Bell Tower massacre to be haunting.

She survived, horribly wounded, but her 8-month term baby did not. A bullet fragment pierced his skull in utero. Her parents took the body and had it buried and didn't tell her. She woke up . . . not pregnant. It wasn't until decades later she should where her baby was buried and on what would have been his 48th year of life, there was finally a headstone.

The article doesn't focus on the shooter. It focuses on this one victim and says a lot about how women's pain and loss was treated in 1966, PTSD when it was just getting a name. Her loss of both a child and seeing the young man she loved dead next to her while she was bleeding out.

And how she climbed that tower, decades later, and saw where he'd aimed at her and pulled the trigger.

An expert in weapons talked about the scopes Whitman was using and how he easy it was for him to choose her big belly, clad in a bright dress and decided to shoot downward at her. She must have turned slightly as he shot because the round caught her in the hip, lacerating her pelvis and internal organs. It took her 9 months to walk unaided.

Her life was interesting but sad. Unable to conceive, she sought solace in nature and religious retreats but was always restless and haunted.

This is the type of thing you'll read in this book, not just more of the same stories of UNSPEAKABLE ACTS.