Sarah Weinman's Scoundrel: How a Convicted Murderer Persuaded the Women Who Loved Him, the Conservative Establishment, and the Courts to Set Him Free sits squarely in one of today's hottest genres: true crime. Consumers of the genre may crave the rush that comes from real-life crime stories, especially ones that prove the cliché that truth can be stranger than fiction. In addition, people are fascinated by the depths and evils of the human mind, as evinced by the success of books based on accounts of true crimes, such as In Cold Blood by Truman Capote and all-time genre bestseller Helter Skelter by Vincent Bugliosi. Norman Mailer's The Executioner's Song won the Pulitzer Prize in 1980.

Although recently re-established through prominence in podcasts and TV shows, the true crime genre has its origins centuries ago. Scottish ballads from as early as the 16th century described supposedly true stories of love and the murderous lengths to which people would go for it, and ...