murder ink: a killer collection

"Murder, let's face it, is as American as cherry pie.

That's the unavoidable conclusion one reaches after reading the Library of America's huge, bloody, fascinating, often depressing yet sometimes grimly funny anthology of 350 years of true-crime writing. . . .

. . . The anthology is almost obscenely entertaining, if one has a strong stomach and a certain mind-set, but it is also a searching look at the dark underside of American reality, at an aspect of the human condition that both horrifies and fascinates us."

Excerpt from Washington Post review of True Crime: An American Anthology edited by Harold Schecter. Haven't read it, and though I'm a crime fan like my mother before me, I'm not sure I want to. 780 pages is a lot of true crime, especially without any tea and scones to wash it down with.

Coincidentally, one of the authors in the anthology is A. J. Liebling, a New Yorker writer whose book The Jollity Building was just recommended to me by a friend last week.