Fact, fiction. Fiction, fact. It's a delicate dance for every novel ever written. All fiction owes a debt to reality — even all those "Tom Clancy's Op-Center" books. The relationship between the two can be complex, even treacherous.

Just ask Joyce Carol Oates. The acclaimed author issued a public apology this fall for making free use of a New Jersey college kid's strange death as the basis for a New Yorker short story. (In both sagas, the body ended up in a landfill; suffice it to say, friends and family of the real-life deceased didn't have a hard time picking up on the fiction's echo.) It was a small controversy even by literary standards, but it served as a reminder of just how dependent many authors are on news clippings, rumors, urban legends, conversations and other random ephemera.

In order to make stuff up, it seems, you need plenty of raw, real material.

That's certainly the theme of "Murder by the Book," a five-part docu-miniseries on Court TV. The premise of the series that debuts Monday night is simple: five superstar mystery writers walk viewers through a sensational true crime and reveal how they used them in their best-sellers. (Crime writers, see, rarely encounter Joyce Carol Oates-style embarrassment; the whole genre is ripped off from the headlines.)

___

THE SHOW

On its face, "Murder by the Book" is a very straightforward pitch to Court TV's crime-obsessed audience, with production values that careen from cheesy to compelling and back again. The featured authors — James Ellroy, Michael Connelly, Faye and Jonathan Kellerman and Lisa Scottoline — are all talented mega-sellers. The real crimes the series details are horrific, grisly and fiendish. Some are either completely or partially unsolved.

But why should the rest of us care? Underneath its tabloid-TV skin, "Murder by the Book" manages to get at some meatier connections between fiction and reality. The fact that these authors can turn unmitigated gore into popular entertainment says a lot about the way art mirrors the world, but also filters it into something manageable, digestible.

"Crime fiction in many ways is easier to deal with than true crime," says Michael Connelly. Today, Connelly is the author of a wildly popular series about fictional LAPD detective Harry Bosch. "Murder by the Book" shoots him back in time to his early '80s days as a police-beat reporter in Fort Lauderdale, covering a cross-country rampage by serial killer Christopher Wilder.

"Ninety-eight percent of the time, crime fiction stories have endings. Usually those endings have something to do with justice. Having been a cop reporter, I know that in real life the percentage is nowhere near that high."

___

DARK PLACES

In its blockbuster opening episode, the series even manages to deal explicitly with whether fact-based crime fiction exploits real-life misery as it packages it into narratives you can buy at the airport. It's the very question Joyce Carol Oates unwittingly collided with her New Yorker story; "Murder by the Book" tackles it head-on.

Few writers have made more effective use of factual crime than James Ellroy. The author of LA Confidential and The Black Dahlia infuses his neo-noir with period details and, more importantly, a feverish existential dread. His own mother's never-solved murder has been both Ellroy's abiding theme — whether or not it is his explicit subject, as it was in the non-fiction "My Dark Places" — and one of his publicity calling cards.

In his episode, Ellroy explores his mother's seedy 1958 death in a dusty, low-rent LA suburb. It is, he says, his final public statement on the matter.

"This is either the seventh or eighth documentary film made about me," Ellroy told asap. "They all stress, all of them, my mother's murder and its unsolved status; my low-life past; my obsession with the Black Dahlia murder; and my redemption — arguably — through becoming a crime novelist. ... My mother's murder is a very powerful media magnet, and I'm tired of talking about it."

Ellroy added that three events — a Los Angeles Times Sunday Magazine article he wrote probing his relationship with his home city, the release of The Black Dahlia's movie version and the Court TV series — make it possible for him never to discuss his mother's death again. The laser-focused pain and rage that he wears throughout the hour-long "Murder by the Book" episode leaves no doubt that this chapter of real life remains very real to him, a half-century later.

___

CULTURAL TIME CAPSULES

Serious, high-profile crimes act as cultural time capsules, freezing the moment they occurred in the form of crime-scene photos, detective files, newspaper articles and video clips. Ellroy's episode revives a cigar-and-fedora era of dive bars, drive-ins and pomade. Connelly, meanwhile, takes us back to South Florida's tacky, hot-pink Miami Vice salad days, feathered hair, mustaches and lounge-lizard chic. Just as Ellroy's story is rooted in the '50s, Connelly's look at Wilder's rampage is a flash-frozen chunk of the first Reagan Administration. Other episodes visit other eras.

But period detail aside, all five "Murder by the Book" episodes probe painful, tangled stories: the perfect raw ingredients, in other words, for fiction, when shaped by the right hands.

"The Wilder case was the first time I was really cognizant, as a reporter, of the essential dichotomy," Connelly says. "The best stories are the worst cases. This was a horrific case, but a great story. Going back to it now was a reminder that the emotional underpinnings of a story are what you really need to pay attention to, far more than the details. That's definitely something you can take into being a novelist. So this was kind of like a continuing education course."

___

asap contributor Zach Dundas is a freelance writer in Portland, Ore.

Only registered users can write comments.
Please login or register.