Here's the Crime-Drama Recipe that Makes 'Serial' So Successful

The Takeaway | Nov 18, 2014

In 1999, high school senior Hae Min Lee was murdered in Baltimore County, Maryland. Her ex-boyfriend, Adnan Syed, was convicted of the murder and has spent the last 15 years in jail.

But This American Life producer Sarah Koenig isn't so sure that the state got the right guy. In a new podcast called Serial, she goes through old police reports, hunts down witnesses, and attempts to find out for herself what really happened.

According to iTunes, Serial has been downloaded and streamed more than 5 million times, making it the fastest podcast ever to reach that level of popularity on iTunes.

Just what has made this podcast so successful? And how does it conform to—and break—the conventions that have long made crime fiction so successful in novels and on television?

Weighing in is writer Megan Abbott, the author of several crime fiction novels and something of an expert on the genre. Her most recent novel is "The Fever," and she is also the author of "The Street Was Mine: White Masculinity in Hardboiled Fiction and Film Noir"

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