Fiction, History, and Truth ‹ CrimeReads

Packaged in many ways, truth is the backbone of every story that satisfies the reader, no matter if we write murder mysteries, thrillers with its many subgroups, historical suspense, or real-life crime novels. Truth can be the meticulous historical accuracy Ken Follett artfully portrayed in Pillars of the Earth. While Kingsbridge is fictional, we see, smell, and hear the sights how Follett builds the cathedral and the town around it, stone-by-stone, house-by-house, event-by-event. We are transported to that time to "live" in the book, to feel the tensions that run through it because we care about the characters. Likewise, we find an authenticity in Umberto Ecco's The Name of the Rose. Ecco immerses us in details and minutiae that give the book its air of verisimilitude. We believe it. We transfer "truths" to the story that may not have existed but were earned by its masterful descriptions. We care not that . . . Rose is not historically accurate.