True Crime Winner: West Cork

This was a good year to be a true crime fan. The genre is booming, and the bar is set high: the finalists here are so good it’s downright criminal to pick a winner. But taking into account all factors—gripping story, stellar production, investigative and ethical rigor—one rose to the top. West Cork, about the unsolved murder of a French woman (Sophie Toscan du Plantier) on a remote coast of Ireland in 1996, is an intricately reported masterpiece of content and form. Journalists Sam Bungey and Jennifer Forde have unprecedented access to the main suspect and townspeople, but nothing is certain as they untangle two decades of secrets and gossip amid a masterful soundscape that transports you straight to the setting. I listen to a lot of true crime, and not much still haunts me almost a year later. West Cork does. —Kat, Audible Editor