As crime shows splatter the screen, a subversive blast from the past proves remarkably timely

After twenty years, Gary Indiana's noir novel of a celebrity murder trial with a gay twist is back in print, and just in time:

Although Kraus doesn’t make anything of it in her excellent afterword to this new edition, I think it’s significant that Resentment re-emerges at the same time as Americans are once again infatuated by high-profile murder cases routed to them through their media. I’m thinking here of This American Life’s hit podcast Serial and HBO’s miniseries The Jinx: The Life and Times of Robert Durst. Over its 12 episodes, Serial examined in painstaking detail the particulars of Adnan Syed’s conviction for the murder of his sometime-girlfriend in 1999. The Jinx’s 6 hour-long episodes meanwhile combined extended interviews with Robert Durst with a ruthless, graphic examination and representation of his alleged crimes. Both series were immensely popular, expertly produced, and have been critically acclaimed for offering sober meditations on murder and the vicissitudes of the United States’ criminal justice system.

A veneer of respectability in place, it seemed acceptable to adjudge the guilt or innocence of Adnan Syed amongst one’s peers or denounce Robert Durst to one’s friends and colleagues. But read Indiana’s Resentment and you start to see things differently: in the light of this inflammatory tract it’s immediately apparent that there’s nothing novel about these series and certainly nothing moral; nothing new in their aestheticizing of human tragedy, their picking over the details of death with knitted brows, their disingenuous appeals to truth and justice for victims. Neither is there anything virtuous in their audience’s fervour, the consumption of one episode after another led on by the gradually receding promise of truth, nor, perhaps, anything meaningful in them save their illustration of a society corrupted by the spectacle. And that’s entertainment.

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