It's simple. "Who Killed Garrett Phillips?" HBO. July 2019. In the vexed New York town called Potsdam, the "North Country," a place "not easy to get to," a middle schooler heads home. He is wrapping up his school day. He enters his mom's apartment. Within one or two hours, he is strangled, dead. This is a true story. Racist cops ("We're not racist") decide that a local African-American soccer coach must have done the deed. There's very little that could even be called circumstantial evidence. The soccer coach is treated brutally; he loses his job; for years, he fights to clear his name. If he didn't actually commit the crime, then, somewhere, perhaps somewhere near Potsdam, a child-murderer is wandering around, scot-free. It's been said that following a crime story is like following a fairy tale. The "pleasures" (queasy, problematic term, in this context) on offer are similar. You sense that someone is a ...