True crime is the genre of literature based on actual crimes and the real life perpetrators. Initially popularised in the late 19th & early 20th centuries, the most famous of the genre is Truman Capote’s superbly written In Cold Blood, which, in 1965, he called a ‘non-fiction novel’. Australia’s most successful exponent of the form currently is Helen Garner, notably with Joe Cinque’s Consolation and This House of Grief.