50 pages • 1 hour read
The Butcher and the Wren
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Background
Authorial Context: Autopsy Technician-Turned-Author
Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses graphic violence and potentially disturbing themes related to a serial killer and his crimes.
Alaina Urquhart is the author of The Butcher and the Wren, but she is also an autopsy technician and a notable true crime podcaster. Urquhart began Morbid: A True Crime Podcast with her niece, Ash Kelley, in 2018. The two are similar in age and often refer to each other as “sisters” on the podcast. Much of the popularity of Morbid stems from Urquhart’s unique perspective as an autopsy technician blended with the colloquial, easy to understand, and, when appropriate, comedic nature of the podcast due to the organic banter between Urquhart and Kelley. Urquhart has said in an interview with CrimeReads, “Gallows humor has a place in the death industry, to allow workers to cope with the sometimes suffocating sadness that comes with the job, but it can never be in relation to the victim” (Odintz, Molly. “Morbid Podcast Host and Autopsy Technician Alaina Urquhart Talks True Crime and Turning to Fiction.” CrimeReads, 22 March 2022). Urquhart maintains a clinical tone when discussing the details of the victims’ deaths, but she and Kelley often use humor to mock the killers, such as when Urquhart and Kelley covered the BTK Killer (who is also mentioned in Wren’s internal dialogue in The Butcher and the Wren) and referred to him only as “Dennis” in sardonic tones to avoid using his chosen serial killer moniker. The duo has released over 500 episodes of Morbid and continue to put out new content on a weekly basis.
Urquhart’s work as an autopsy technician also heavily informs the narrative of The Butcher and the Wren. Wren spends a significant amount of time in the autopsy suite, examining the bodies of Jeremy’s other victims. The specificity of the language around Wren’s survey of the first victim’s lividity, her instructions to her autopsy technicians about what to look for in the procedures she delegates, and her own autopsy of the buried alive victim, Emma, demonstrates Urquhart’s insider knowledge of the details of decomposition, autopsy procedures, and the human body. This adds a layer of realism to Wren’s character background and to the portion of the narrative that focuses on description of the bodies and their decomposition.
Cultural Context: The True Crime Novel
The true crime genre has skyrocketed in popularity in the last 10 years, especially in the realm of podcasting. The first true crime podcast to achieve mass popularity was Serial, which was the fastest podcast to reach 5 million iTunes downloads. There are now hundreds of true crime podcasts currently active across the number of podcasting platforms, and the popularity does not seem to be tapering off, despite some questions about the ethics of using the murder of real people to generate content. Urquhart addresses the concern in her CrimeReads interview, saying, “[p]eople who are in it for the right reasons share these stories to offer respect and exposure to victims who can’t do it for themselves” (Odintz). Though the podcast format is new, the modern true crime genre can trace its lineage back to Truman Capote’s 1965 novel In Cold Blood, which detailed the murders of the Clutter family in Holcomb, Kansas. In Cold Blood became wildly popular and profitable, which paved the way for further literary explorations of true crime.
While The Butcher and the Wren is a fictional novel, therefore not “true” crime, it is influenced by Urquhart’s interest in true crime and her experience hosting the Morbid true crime podcast. The serial killer is an invention of Urquhart’s imagination, but as Wren points out in her interior monologue, he has similarities to other, real serial killers, like Dennis Rader (aka the BTK killer) and Israel Keyes. Wren also discusses the psychology behind the killer’s actions with detective John Leroux throughout their investigation, further demonstrating how Urquhart is in conversation with the true crime genre, even though the novel itself is fictional.
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