A New 'Serial' Podcast And What To Watch, Read And Listen To After 'The Jinx'

You’re a voyeur. You have low moral standards and we -- the respected minds of civilized society -- have questions about your life choices simply because you’re titillated by stories about someone else’s pain.

That, in so many words, is what critics and the literary establishment have long thought of the hordes of consumers who gobble up true crime stories. But now, high-profile productions like HBO’s “The Jinx” and the “Serial” podcast have pushed such stories to the front page of almost every major website. Even the New York Times -- which has been criticized by everyone from Stephen King to Jonathan Franzen as being out of touch with American audiences -- is getting in on the love, reporting Wednesday that the “Serial” story will be revisited in another podcast.

Rabia Chaudry, the attorney representing Adnan Syed -- the central figure in “Serial” -- will host the new bimonthly show, called “Undisclosed.” Fans of "Serial" and listeners eager to hear what's happening with Syed and his appeal will have to wait until April 13 for the premiere episode.

After "Serial," viewers fell in love with “The Jinx” and the HBO series has already become a true crime titan for this generation. The show, which ran for six weeks in February and March, featured long interviews with Robert Durst, the black sheep of a New York City real estate family who spent decades in and out of the tabloids. Durst has been accused of murdering his first wife, a friend and a third person who may or may not have threatened to reveal his secrets to the police. The series finale featured an incredible revelation, and Durst is currently in police custody.

So, after "Serial" and "The Jinx," where can you get your true crime fix? Here’s a brief list of recommendations to enjoy instead:

TRUE CRIME 101

“In Cold Blood” (1966) -- Truman Capote

“The Executioner’s Song” (1979) – Norman Mailer

“Helter Skelter” (1974) – Vincent Bugliosi

These three books are the father, son and holy spirit of true crime. They’re each about famous murders -- in Kansas, Utah and the Manson family killings in California -- and the investigations that followed. They’re the quintessential starting point for true crime fans; many subsequent books in the genre have compared their subjects to these stories, assuming the reader is in the know.

“Tales of the Grim Sleeper” (2015)

This HBO doc, which debuts April 27, could inspire the next online discussion with the story of a serial killer who terrorized South Central Los Angeles for more than two decades. Lonnie Franklin Jr. was arrested in 2010 for allegedly committing more than a dozen murders, though the killings had stayed largely out of the headlines because the victims were primarily crack addicts and prostitutes. Along with the dramatic story, expect a wave of social media posts questioning how we, as a society, value someone’s life differently depending on their race, gender and class.

NEXT STEPS

“The Imposter” (2012)

This is the story of a family in rural Texas who, years after their son goes missing, receive a phone call from someone in France claiming to be him. It only gets more bizarre from there, with a cast of real-life characters including a European fraudster and a Texas private investigator who seems like he jumped off a show on TV Land.

The movie is streaming on Netflix, but first you should read journalist David Grann’s story in the New Yorker about how it all went down.

“Evolution of a Criminal” (2014)

This movie’s seemingly simple premise quickly becomes into a spider web of questions about what causes someone to break the law. At once a meditation on poverty, reformation and forgiveness, it’s the first-person story of a bank robber who is released from prison with his entire life in front of him. “Evolution of a Criminal” also is streaming on Netflix.

“People Who Eat Darkness” (2010) – Richard Lloyd Parry

The book, written by the Tokyo bureau chief of the Times of London, delves into the 2000 disappearance of Lucie Blackman, a blond bombshell from the United Kingdom who went missing shortly after arriving in Japan. Blackman had sought an escape from her disintegrating family by working as a hostess in a Tokyo nightclub before she was abducted by a serial rapist and murderer.

It only gets darker from there, but New York Times critic Dwight Garner put it best when he wrote: “I read ‘People Who Eat Darkness’ over the course of two days and always placed it face down in the kitchen, lest a glimpse of it unnerve the children and animals in the house.”

ADVANCED STUDIES

“Love and Terror on the Howling Plains of Nowhere” (2015)

This upcoming documentary is based on the fantastic memoir of writer Poe Ballantine, who moved into a sleepy Nebraska town shortly before one of its residents, a math professor, was found dead. Steven Haataja’s corpse was found burned and tied to a tree, and locals still debate whether he was killed or committed suicide. Just read the book.

Errol Morris

If you haven’t heard of this director, look him up immediately. Morris is a prolific documentary filmmaker who has frequently returned to the true crime genre. There’s “The Thin Blue Line” (1988), which led to the release of a wrongfully convicted prisoner, or “Tabloid” (2010), the story of how a former beauty queen supposedly kidnapped and raped a Mormon missionary. Better yet, look into “First Person” (2000-2001), Morris’ short-lived show that featured interviews with crime scene cleaners, mob lawyers and a friend of the Unabomber, among others.

In 2012, Morris published “A Wilderness of Error,” the latest book to examine the case of Jeffrey MacDonald, a U.S. Army officer and medical doctor convicted of murdering his family in 1970. Along with the case itself, Morris also dissects the media coverage of it, which included the books “Fatal Vision” by Joe McGinniss and “The Journalist and the Murderer” by Janet Malcolm.