Stranger Than Fiction

Monthly true-crime columns by Dean Jobb

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February 2021 - Larger Than Life

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FROM THE EDITOR

The realms of crime fiction and true crime have many intersections. Fiction writers often draw on real investigative techniques, police procedures, and even notorious crime cases in fashioning their stories, and, conversely, fictional sleuths and their methods have occasionally influenced the practices of actual police forces. In this way, the interests of readers of crime fiction and true crime naturally dovetail, yet until 2018 the latter field had never been represented in EQMM. In January of 2018, we launched a new department to remedy that omission. Entitled Stranger Than Fiction, and written by award-winning Canadian author and journalist Dean Jobb, the column was offered free, exclusively here on our website, exploring true crime through reviews of true-crime books and original articles on real-world crimes and criminals. The feature proved so popular online that it was incorporated into the magazine itself (both print and digital editions) as of May/June 2020. In each bimonthly issue of the magazine, readers will now find an original true crime article by Dean Jobb, with supplemental material, including documents and photos, right here on our website, under the Stranger Than Fiction banner. On alternate months (when there is no new issue of the magazine releasing), you’ll still find web-exclusive true crime book reviews by Dean Jobb right here.

A true-crime specialist with more than a half-dozen titles in print, Dean Jobb is the author of one the most notable true-crime works in recent years, Empire of Deception. The story of a master swindler in 1920s Chicago, the book won both the Crime Writers of Canada and Chicago Writers Association awards, and earned rave reviews. The New York Times Book Review called it “intoxicating and impressively researched.” Readers will also want to look for the upcoming Jobb title The Case of the Murderous Dr. Cream (Algonquin Books and HarperCollins Canada, 2021). In addition to pursuing his literary and journalistic careers, Dean Jobb teaches in the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Nonfiction program at the University of King’s College in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

We hope you’ll continue to enjoy this newest of EQMM’s departments, which has joined the Jury Box and Blog Bytes in EQMM’s long tradition of cutting-edge reviewing and scholarship.

— Janet Hutchings