Revisioning Murder: Queer Agency in True Crime Biofiction

Serial killer biofictions are on some level responding to and in dialogue with true crime as a genre and a cultural phenomenon. Critically engaged, culturally competent true crime biofiction must perform three central tasks: it must disturb crime fiction’s emphasis on chronology and perpetrator-focused structures, narrate from alternative and subversive viewpoints, and engage self-consciously with true crime media. It is through queer characters that true crime biofiction is most successful at rearticulating historical ‘truths’ because queer subjects are often associated with non-normative or subversive perspectives. Catherine Hernandez’s true crime biofictional novel Behind You (2024) reconsiders the crimes of a famous serial killer to explore the untold or underrepresented stories at the heart of the lurid tale of manipulation, violence, and death. In this way, Hernandez uses biofiction as a means of grounding her criticisms of patriarchal systems that enable rape culture, violence against women, and the ‘celebrification’ of serial predators.