The American public eagerly embraced Roughead's dry humour as well as his fascination with criminals who looked and sounded exactly like us but who inhabited a parallel dark and rarefied nether world.

This was a reading audience who were being introduced to the masters of hard-boiled pulp fiction, authors who, as Raymond Chandler said, were "...giving murder back to the kind of people that commit it for reasons, not just to provide a corpse."

In the early twenties, Roughead began a correspondence with American crime writer, Edmund Pearson, and a professional exchange of letters blossomed into a warm friendship for the next fifteen years.

It is as unique as it is perfect: a flawless work of art...." According to Joyce Carol Oates: "Roughead's influence was enormous, and since his time "true crime" has become a crowded, flourishing field, though few writers of distinction have been drawn to it.... Roughead, much admired by Henry James, wrote in a style that combined intelligence, witty scepticism, and a flair for old-fashioned storytelling and moralising; his accounts of murder cases and trials have the advantage of being concise and pointed, like folk tales.

Roughead assisted Arthur Conan Doyle, Craigie Aitchison and William Park for nearly 20 years exposing weaknesses in the Crown's case and indeed he was cited as a witness in the 1928 appeal.