Thus The Guardian today. “The genre is witnessing a new era of popularity led by US podcast Serial, Channel 4’s recent ‘The Murder Detectives,’ and bestselling books,” elaborates the newspaper. True crime involves real crimes and bona fide criminals, it goes without saying. “Humans are fascinated by evil,” one of the bestselling crime writers, Ian Rankin, is quoted. “The reader stands at the shoulder of monsters without being endangered.” Monsters? This is where Rankin is wrong, as is the entire article. Put simply, humans are evil in religious parlance, whence the overwhelming popularity of the genre. The reader actually stands at the shoulder of other humans without being endangered. But most of the readers dream of murdering someone or other. And with relish. Murder thus turns into entertainment of the highest genre. For better or worse, few humans are willing to admit this much about themselves even to themselves, let alone others. Such confessions are of interest only after true crime, as it were. Otherwise, they are outright monstrous. Nay, inhuman. Here lies the paradox of the warped human mind, and in so many words.