Impressive ... Lennon’s ambition is not to turn human suffering into spectacle, but to restore complexity to his own story and those of the men around him ... Lennon does not absolve or sanitize. He does not soft-pedal the violence that he and his subjects carried out, or offer satisfying answers when there are none.
It’s an unusual way in...and it seems to promise a book that will confront the genre. But the framing is a Trojan horse ... While his candor is admirable...it also sometimes obfuscates what the author wants his readers to take away from his stories ... I don’t fault Lennon for having empathy...but he did not persuade me to feel the same ... Ultimately, it is never entirely clear why he chose to profile these three men in particular ... One challenging aspect of The Tragedy of True Crime is that it doesn’t really pick a lane. Though the book is framed as a takedown of true crime, it only fleetingly engages with such criticism at the beginning and end, which is mostly for the best.
