Popular Crime Quotes

“blocking out the sunlight increases the ability of the lawyers to play with the shadows.”
― Bill James, Popular Crime: Reflections on the Celebration of Violence

“We are, not as a nation but as human beings, fascinated by crime stories, even obsessed with them. The Bible is full of them. On your television at this moment there are four channels covering true crime stories, and five more doing detective fiction. And yet, on a certain level, we are profoundly ashamed of this fascination. If you go into a good used book store and ask if they have a section of crime books, you will get one of two reactions. One is, the clerk will look at you as if you had asked whether they had any really good pornography. The other is, they will tell you that the crime books are down the aisle on your left, in the alcove beside the detective stories. Right next to the pornography.”
― Bill James, Popular Crime: Reflections on the Celebration of Violence

“by refusing to make any moral judgment here, even the most modest one, people are missing something obvious about the time: that there was a revolutionary fervor in that era fueled not by racial injustice, as Doctorow presented it in Ragtime, but by hatred of the rich, which was fueled in turn by the fact that rich people”
― Bill James, Popular Crime: Reflections on the Celebration of Violence

“The Copeland Killings, was written by Tom Miller, a local reporter. The book is OK, straightforward and inoffensive.”
― Bill James, Popular Crime: Reflections on the Celebration of Violence

“Fatal Vision was a very successful book that a lot of people like, but the problem with it is that you could edit out 75% of the book without losing a single fact or insight.”
― Bill James, Popular Crime: Reflections on the Celebration of Violence

“That said, Fatal Vision does have a major virtue. McGinniss is genuinely obsessed with his story … with that story. That’s the flaw of the book; McGinniss is so obsessed with his material that he doesn’t know when to shut up about it.”
― Bill James, Popular Crime: Reflections on the Celebration of Violence

“Later, after Rule became famous, she stopped writing those kind of books and started writing about a different kind of true-crime case. She started writing about real-life gothic soap operas, dream-come-true husbands who turn out to have a dark past and crap. I don’t have any interest in those crimes or those books, which I think are written for women, and I haven’t been able to read anything she’s written in 25 years, although I keep trying.”
― Bill James, Popular Crime: Reflections on the Celebration of Violence

“Until about 1970 when parents beat their children to death they very often escaped punishment. They would be prosecuted if it was clear and deliberate murder, but if a parent slapped or shook a child and the child died and the parent said the kid fell down the steps, the police virtually never followed up.”
― Bill James, Popular Crime: Reflections on the Celebration of Violence

“Chris Darden made a huge error in asking O.”
― Bill James, Popular Crime: Reflections on the Celebration of Violence

“The capacity of mankind to misunderstand the world is without limit.”
― Bill James, Popular Crime: Reflections on the Celebration of Violence

“Each one roars by us for a few days, is remarked upon in casual conversation and filed away as something less than a memory.”
― Bill James, Popular Crime: Reflections on the Celebration of Violence

“The Warren Court swung the balance of power toward the accused—and the counterbalance of skepticism moved the other way. Trials were once spontaneous, quick and dramatic; now they are rehearsed, endless and often boring, interminable bullshit from professional witnesses who have practiced their skills at sparring with defense attorneys. The jury looks upon the accused as if he must be guilty, or why would he be here?”
― Bill James, Popular Crime: Reflections on the Celebration of Violence

“Let me suggest some other things that I think may have contributed. Police officers are much more professional now than they were a hundred years ago. Police officers a hundred years ago were often not respected by juries because, in truth, they very often were not worthy of much respect. They are better educated now; they have better uniforms and better PR guys. This probably causes juries to give them more credence. This is perhaps unfortunate. Professionals lie just as often as amateurs, only more skillfully.”
― Bill James, Popular Crime: Reflections on the Celebration of Violence