Review: Matt Wesolowski — Six Stories

Fictional crime in a true crime podcast format

I have a bit of a confession to make: I really like true crime podcasts. I thoroughly and completely get that even though true crime is huge right now, it’s also a rather creepy thing to take an interest in. It’s so big right now that podcast hosts can do live tours and sell-out gigs as if they were Metallica and everybody raves about the way so-and-so covered Ted Bundy as if we were all talking about great music or comedy and not horrifying murders and murderers.

Usually, literary fiction takes a while to catch up to trends. This time, though, it has its head screwed on straight and has taken on the challenge of adapting the true crime formula to a new — well, old — medium: the novel. It makes sense the other way — adapting fiction to work in a podcast format has been around since the mid-00s — but turning a podcast into a novel is a new and tricky challenge to tackle.

For a start, the true crime podcast genre is now so huge each new addition needs a very good hook to bring people on board. Everyone has their best and worst, the ones they listen to religiously and the ones they can’t abide. There is a true crime podcast for almost anybody’s taste, unless you’re so utterly horrified by the whole thing that you’d rather jam your fingers into your eyes than listen to one at all.