Human beings are fascinated with the darker side of existence. For most of us, we live in the light. We get up, clean our teeth, have a shower, eat breakfast and go about our days in relative comfort, far removed from the grimmer things that go on in the world. It's perhaps this lack of everyday danger and disgust that draws us to the macabre in our downtime. You only need to switch on a television or browse the bookshelves of your friends' houses to see just how many of us are so oddly interested in crime. When we're not watching films and TV dramas with wall-to-wall stories of violence, murder and wrongdoing, we're following the real-life tales with a fixed glare.
Let's go back to crime dramas and literature quickly. Most are written as whodunits. This plot device allows us to play detective and attempt to solve the mystery ourselves. From the days of Agatha Christie and G.K. Chesterton right through to modern-day TV shows like Broadchurch, it's a format we find irresistible because of the immersive and involving nature of it. So it's no great shock that the famous historical crimes that society is so obsessed by are those that have remained as yet unsolved.
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