I recently finished Broadway Butterfly by Sara DiVello. The novel tells the true story of the 1923 murder of Broadway flapper Anna Marie Keenan, aka Dot King, and the corrupt police investigation that followed. While the crime remains officially unsolved, at least one character in the story stands out as the probable killer, with other prominent figures implicated in the cover up if not the actual crime itself. As someone who has done a fair amount of research into Broadway crimes of the 1920s, I’m familiar with this case and the murders of other Broadway flappers of the era. Sara DiVello does a masterful job of bringing the characters and the setting to life. The story is compelling enough when experienced through the lens of old newspaper accounts, but DiVello’s storytelling animates the setting and brings a depth to the characters that is seldom found in most true crime novels.
The work is marketed as true crime fiction, but DiVello poured an enormous amount of research into the story. She spent nearly ten years assembling 1700 pieces of research that she weaves into the tale. It is a fascinating story and she provides a complete picture of the facts and circumstances surrounding the case. The fiction comes in when she imagines moments of private conversations that took place behind closed doors, or when she sets out the interior thoughts of the four main characters on whom the novel is focused. While there is no way she could know everything that was said or thought by these characters, the extensive research so thoroughly backs up what is written that it becomes entirely believable that these conversations could have taken place.
As a work of true crime fiction, all the facts are expertly assembled, and the fiction layer makes the work three dimensional, keeping the narrative moving along and the pages turning. The fiction elements animate the characters and show them wrestling with internal conflicts that undoubtedly would have troubled them as the investigation proceeded. This adds a layer of drama that a reader is generally not going to get from a nonfiction or journalistic approach.
However, after finishing this true crime novel, I’m left wondering, what is the difference between true crime fiction and creative nonfiction? As a work of creative nonfiction, Dean Jobb’s A Gentleman And A Thief has come in for some criticism from this blog. Jobb flatly asserts in his note to readers that he is presenting facts, that “all scenes and events unfolded as described,” and “an essential element of true crime, after all, is truth.” But, as I’ve shown in previous posts, he has taken some pretty big liberties with the truth. At best, he’s providing a version of the truth flowing from conman and thief, Arthur Barry. At worst, he’s making a deliberate choice to ignore the facts as reported by much more reliable sources whose job it is to present the truth. Why does Jobb get to hang a nonfiction label on his product, while DiVello’s work, which is much more thoroughly and painstakingly researched, comes in as a work of fiction?
Jobb’s approach misleads readers. In one instance, he asserts that Noel Scaffa knowingly lies to the police on behalf of Arthur Barry regarding an alleged exchange of cash for stolen jewelry. Setting aside the problem of taking the word of a thief and conman over that of a private investigator, where does Jobb get off portraying Scaffa as a liar without providing a shred of proof of Scaffa’s deception? Presenting a work as nonfiction ought to require a good faith rendering of all relevant versions of the events you’re attempting to portray. If you’re choosing to exclude relevant information or mislead the reader in order to shape a narrative, then you’re not writing nonfiction. It’s pretty ironic that DiVello’s work of true crime fiction comes off as more truthful and honest than Jobb’s alleged work of creative nonfiction.
If there is something 